


The Book of Prometheus

by lyricwritesprose



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crowley Was Not Raphael Before Falling, Eventual Sexual Relationship, Finished Story, Gets more fluffy eventually, I would like to emphasize that the character death is strictly temporary, Identity Issues, M/M, Pining, Reincarnation, Temporary Character Death, The violence is in one chapter and I have html so you can skip if needed, Updates on Sundays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-11-15
Packaged: 2021-03-02 02:14:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 30
Words: 63,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23857441
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lyricwritesprose/pseuds/lyricwritesprose
Summary: As far as Ezra Fell knows, he's an ordinary bookseller who has no reason to be so strongly attracted to the strange man in dark glasses who comes in looking for an old book.  And he certainly has no reason to pursue that connection after the man goes away.  He's doing it anyway.As far as Crowley is concerned, Aziraphale was completely destroyed in 1656.  But then he came back again.  And again . . .They meet in late 2007.  They don't know how close they are to running out of time.  They're about to find out.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 1059
Kudos: 427
Collections: Good Omens Celebration





	1. Pimpernel

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Flowers for Anthony](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20126557) by [Atalan](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atalan/pseuds/Atalan). 



> This fic is inspired by the magnificent "Pray for Us, Icarus" series by Atalan.

The bell above the door jingled five minutes before closing, and Ezra sighed. He didn’t want to deal with customers. Dealing with customers was not one of his strengths at the best of times, but five minutes before closing, with a good book in his hands, that was especially galling. He prepared a customer service smile that didn’t reach his eyes, took off his reading glasses, put an ancient bookmark in  _ The Two Towers _ , and looked up. “Can I help—”

He wasn’t entirely sure why he stopped. He had never seen that man before in his life.

The man was tall, startlingly thin, and wearing dark glasses despite the late hour and the evening light outside the shop. He had a cascade of dark red hair. He looked excruciatingly nervous, as if he was about to vibrate out of his skin.

And there was no reason for the back of Ezra’s mind to say,  _ oh, thank God, it’s you. _ Because he had never met the man before. He hadn’t.

“I’m looking for a book,” the man said. Abrupt, as if he hadn’t expected himself to speak.

“Well, you’ve come to the right place.” Ezra nodded at the shelves around him. “If you have a specific book in mind, I’d be more than happy to help you find it—“ His reluctance to deal with customers had evaporated entirely at the sight of the man.

Why? Why was there a voice in his head saying,  _ don’t be silly, of course this isn’t a customer, it’s— _

What came next? What was the man’s name?

“What’s your name?” Ezra asked, and wondered at himself.

“Crowley.” He prowled along the shelves, and then startled, as if remembering something. “That is—Anthony J. Crowley.”

“Ezra Fell,” Ezra said. “What does the J stand for?”

“Er, it’s just—ngh—it’s just there for—Ezra Fell? Really?”

“Er, yes?” The conversation wasn’t going anywhere that Ezra could predict. “Why?”

“Nothing. Nothing, it’s just—close.” Ezra wasn’t sure what he meant by that, and Anthony—no, he shouldn’t be thinking of this man by his first name, he shouldn’t be assuming familiarity, he shouldn’t  _ feel _ so familiar—didn’t elaborate. “Do you have  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel?” _

Crowley didn’t look like the sort of person who read old books. In fact, he didn’t look like a reader at all. More like someone who spent his time on music and fast cars and—and whatever interesting, fast-living people did. Ezra didn’t know. He was, he was well aware, not “cool.” The most daring choice he had made lately was to wear a pink sleeveless jumper. Rather boring, actually.

A person like Crowley wouldn’t look twice at someone like him. Not interesting enough. Not worthy of his attention.

Why did that matter? Why did that matter so much that it sunk into his chest like a lead weight?

“Several editions of  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel,” _ Ezra said. “And sequels. Follow me.”

If Ezra had been able to have the bookshop he wanted, he would have packed it full of first editions and rare volumes and books that you couldn’t find anywhere else. Although, that dream might be inherently flawed, because who could possibly bear to  _ let go _ of rare volumes once they found them? As it was, his shop was a fairly ordinary used bookshop. He led Crowley to the correct shelf—classics, Orczy. “Paperback and hardback,” he said. “Hardback is worth the extra money, if you ask me.”

“Hardback, definitely. The one I have is a hardback.”

Ezra blinked. “You already have it?”

Crowley flinched. “I—don’t read that copy. It belonged to—someone. Someone I—someone I lost.”

He looked—fractured. Broken. As if he could crumble under the weight of the memory. “I’m sorry to hear it,” Ezra said, and then cursed himself inwardly. Sorry to hear it? That was the best he could manage?

What he  _ wanted _ to do was step forward. Put his arms around Crowley. Bend his head down so it was resting on Ezra’s shoulder, and stroke Crowley’s glorious red hair, and whisper,  _ it’s all right, it’s all right. I’m here. _

And that was mad. Properly mad. For Heaven’s sake, he didn’t even  _ know _ this man!

Wanted to know him, though.

Needed to know him. And Ezra didn’t  _ need _ people. It wasn’t that he disliked people, but he could do without them—do without them to a degree that his parents and peers had found somewhat disturbing.  _ Don’t bother talking to him, he likes books better— _ how many connections had he missed, because of that? And here was a connection that he couldn’t  _ bear _ to miss, and he didn’t even know why, and what came out of his mouth was  _ I’m sorry to hear it. _

“Will it make it better? Having the book?”

“Probably not,” Crowley said. “Probably just keeping the wound open, at this point.”

“Are you sure you wouldn’t like something else to read, then? Something—perhaps something in the same vein as the  _ Scarlet Pimpernel _ stories, but without the—the bad memories?”

“Not all bad memories,” Crowley said vehemently. He looked away. “Maybe bad memories. It—doesn’t end well. Never ends well. But every single bad memory is precious.” He pulled the  _ Scarlet Pimpernel _ hardback off the shelf and tucked it under his arm. “What would you recommend? As a story that’s like  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel, _ but—not.”

_ “The Mark of Zorro,” _ Ezra said promptly. “Here.” He moved to the M section and realized with regret that he only had one copy, and that a paperback. If he had his way, if he didn’t have to worry about money, or sales, or any of that, he could have  _ such _ a collection. “It’s a bit pulpy, but it contains similar themes. A sword-wielding hero who outwits the authorities. You could think of it as the American  _ Scarlet Pimpernel, _ really.”

“Sounds wonderful,” Crowley said.

“I’m glad.” And then they were out of words, awkward and frozen, and it had to be just Ezra’s imagination that Crowley’s face showed the same inexplicable longing that Ezra was feeling. “Do I—do I  _ know _ you?” Ezra managed finally. He shouldn’t say it. It was mad to say it. It was impossible not to say it.

“No,” Crowley said. “You don’t.” There was a hopeless, heavy thud to the words. “Thanks for the books. What do I owe you?”

“You don’t,” Ezra said. “Consider them a gift.”

Crowley shook his head very slightly. “No. Don’t do that.”

“It’s my shop. To run the way I see fit.” The challenge made Ezra draw himself up ever so slightly. He was aware that he was approximately as well-suited to confrontation as a styrofoam sword, but this was  _ his _ territory. “If I only cared about making a profit, I certainly wouldn’t sell  _ books. _ It’s not about the money.”

“What’s it about, then?”

“Love of the written word. Love of the breadth of humanity’s imagination. There’s an author, you know, who insists that we shouldn’t be called  _ homo sapiens, _ but instead  _ pan narrans— _ the ape who tells stories. When I get a chance to share that love—“ Talking about sharing love might take him to a place that neither of them were ready for. “Er, to match the perfect book with the customer—there’s a joy in that. Please. Take the books. And if you would—you could come back. Er. And tell me. Whether I was right, about matching the book with the customer.”

This time, Ezra was certain he didn’t imagine the naked longing. Even with the dark glasses still on, even not being able to see Crowley’s eyes—it was less like seeing it, and more like  _ feeling _ it. Deep in his chest.

“I don’t think that would be a good idea,” Crowley managed.

“I don’t mind. We could talk about the book. Have a cup of tea. Although I don’t have a refrigerator to store milk for it.”

“I think—I shouldn’t— _ you  _ shouldn’t—“ Crowley made an inarticulate noise, and then outright  _ fled, _ slapping some money next to Ezra’s cash register even though Ezra hadn’t seen him reach into his pockets, and dashing out the door. The bell above the door rang discordantly, and he was gone.

Ezra stared after him, unable to move. The voice in his head was wailing,  _ you’re letting him go, you’re letting him go, you’re letting him  _ go— And it made no sense.

Ezra didn’t know him.

He didn’t know him.


	2. Losing Aziraphale

It was 1656, and Crowley was in a mixed mood.

On the one hand, he was currently in the closest thing Hell had to good books, and that took a load off his mind. After what Oliver Cromwell had done to the Irish, Cromwell’s soul was trending in a distinctly downward direction, and Hell always appreciated high-ranking souls—not because of the massive ripple effects that bad leaders produced, but because high-ranking souls made for better boasting. Crowley thought the entire thing was stupid, but he wasn’t about to go around saying so. Anymore than he was going to go around saying that he wasn’t  _ sure _ how much he’d had to do with the Irish massacres. True, he’d leaned on Cromwell to get a little more religious, and true, that made Cromwell more disinclined to tolerate Catholicism, but it was really the politics that were at the heart of it—the Catholics allying themselves with the Royalists. If they hadn’t done  _ that, _ Cromwell would have gritted his teeth and tolerated them.

Crowley certainly wasn’t going to say that if he had known what was going to happen, he would have found an excuse to be in another part of the world, and that how far Cromwell had gone bothered him. The thought that he might have had something to do with it gave him a nasty unsteady feeling whenever he thought about it, so mostly he didn’t. There were things you learned not to examine too closely when you were a demon.

It made an excellent anecdote to sell to Hell, though—damning a man’s soul by spurring him towards extra piety, exactly the sort of irony that Dagon really savored. And now, England was to be under military rule, and Crowley knew that a majority of the Major Generals would end up in Hell as well—leadership without someone to put the brakes on  _ never _ went well, you would think the humans would have learned by now.  _ That _ was something Crowley could take credit for without doing a blessed thing, and things that he could take credit for without doing a blessed thing were among Crowley’s favorite things.

Speaking of favorite things, Crowley was returning to London to meet with Aziraphale.

Aziraphale was not coping well with the Protectorate, not least of which because the bare bones of it had been Heaven’s idea. Heaven had finally caught on to the fact that kings were, more often than not, a mistake, and thought that a highly religious and kingless government was at least a worthwhile experiment, and Aziraphale had been charged with setting some of it into motion—meaning that  _ Aziraphale _ felt profound guilt over what had gone on in Ireland, meaning that Crowley had talked up his own role in it to give Aziraphale someone else to blame, meaning that Aziraphale got upset at him for it, meaning  _ unholy bloody fuck _ why couldn’t things ever be simple.

Still, once Crowley got back to London—once he got to stop concentrating on the carriage’s horses not going insane from his proximity, which always set up an ache right between his eyes—they could bemoan the state of the world together. Aziraphale would have spirited away dozens of texts that the Puritans disapproved of, and Crowley would tell him he was ridiculous, and Aziraphale would say that knowledge was always important, and Crowley would tempt him into discussing it over a drink, and Aziraphale would say that he didn’t mind if he did.

Aziraphale had faded out of the world in the last two hours or so, and that was somewhat worrying. Crowley knew what a fadeout like that meant. It meant that Aziraphale was reporting to his superiors, in Heaven, and it was unpredictable when he’d be back. Not to mention that Aziraphale wasn’t  _ scheduled _ to report to Heaven, which meant that something might have happened, which meant that—

Oh, there he was. Back on Earth, back in London. That was good. Well, of course it was  _ good, _ it was Aziraphale, softly glowing and gentle to Crowley’s senses, but it was also good in a purely personal, selfish sense. The report hadn’t taken long, then. Maybe Aziraphale wouldn’t have that unhappy, pinched sense about him that he so often got after dealing with Heaven—

There was something wrong.

There was something badly wrong. Aziraphale was in trouble. It was the equivalent of seeing a human round a corner breathing hard, with the whites of his eyes showing.

Aziraphale was in trouble.

Crowley transported himself directly out of the coach. To London. It wasn’t a safe thing to do, even at this late hour. He landed in the middle of a street, bare inches from a horse—which, being a horse, instantly activated the  _ oh God a snake _ portion of its tiny mad mind. It reared up, threw its rider, and brought its hooves down exactly where Crowley had been an instant before. He wasn’t anymore. He was running.

Running towards whatever was happening with Aziraphale.

Aziraphale hadn’t returned to Earth by the stairs. Aziraphale had returned to Earth apparently at random, and he was running towards a church.

Crowley blessed under his breath as he chased the scent. He had to catch Aziraphale before he made it to a church. Inside a church, Crowley would be cut off from the majority of his power. Inside a church, he couldn’t  _ help _ as much. Didn’t Aziraphale remember his ally’s limitations? Or was he not even thinking of that?

How deeply in trouble  _ was _ he, anyway?

Crowley rounded the corner, within sight of the church. He could see three figures on the steps, one of them wheeling to face the other two.

Then there was a flare of power.  _ Not _ Aziraphale. Something much harsher, much brighter and more pitiless.

And then Aziraphale was gone. Completely vanished from the world.

Crowley could feel it. Feel his absence.

Crowley didn’t actually mean to shriek. It just ripped its way out.

The two remaining figures didn’t turn towards the sound, even though it must have sounded nothing like a human or even a mortal animal. They looked upwards and dissolved into light.

Angels. Agents of Heaven.

Crowley didn’t care. He raced towards the spot, ignoring the warning tingle in his feet as he climbed the church steps, and knelt heavily by the place he had last seen his best friend. There was still power in the air, swiftly fading, but nothing of Aziraphale.

“Someone.” He gulped. “Someone killed my best friend.” No, that wasn’t right.  _ “Angels _ killed my best friend.” He looked up to the sky and screamed,  _ “I’ll make you sorry! All of you!” _

And then he staggered off, tears running down his face, not caring who saw him like that.

This wasn’t some human tangle. This wasn’t like Cromwell, where he wasn’t sure how much influence he’d had or whether it was his fault or how much of it was just humans being humans. This was different. There was only one reason for angels to want to kill Aziraphale. And that reason was Crowley.

Crowley, who had come up with the Arrangement. Crowley, who had gently pulled Aziraphale closer and closer, tempting him with the specter of friendship, the whisper of  _ you won’t be alone anymore. _ Crowley, who had lulled Aziraphale like a skittish creature, until the angel would put his hands on Crowley’s skin to show him,  _ no, that won’t do for a blessing, here, feel the way I do it. _

Crowley, who had always had his own agenda. Even if it was one that would never be fulfilled. Even if he had told himself daily that Aziraphale’s friendship was enough.

Crowley’s fault. All of it.

It was all he could think about.

Several hours later, with several empty bottles lined up in front of him, it was still all he could think about. To the limited extent that he was thinking at all.

§

Crowley spent the next few weeks not thinking. Crowley spent the next few weeks paying an increasingly spooked landlord not only for his drinks, but to ignore the fact that nobody could drink that much.

The Spanish Inquisition had nothing on this. The fourteenth century had nothing on this.

He couldn’t actually make himself discorporate with alcohol. If he could have, he would have.

Sometime during week four, an unwelcome thought crawled into his mind and lodged there like a parasite. Aziraphale had apartments.

Aziraphale had apartments, and the apartments had books in them, and those books were all that was left of Aziraphale.

Crowley blessed, slid some indeterminate amount of money across the bar to the silent, wary publican, and staggered out into the street, not bothering to sober up.

He was slightly more sober by the time he made it to Aziraphale’s rooms. The woman Aziraphale was renting from accepted his presence once soothed by a miracle. It was a typical Aziraphale sort of situation, a widow scraping by with what she had, cooking for her tenants and cooking especially well for Aziraphale, since he looked to be of an age to settle down with a nice middle-aged woman and any widow with a bit of sense could tell that the way to his heart was through food. Aziraphale got on well with people like that, even if he inevitably left them disappointed.

Perhaps that was why the landlady hadn’t immediately thrown Aziraphale’s possessions into the street when he didn’t pay up for this month. Which was very lucky for her. In his current, not-remotely-sober state of mind, Crowley wasn’t sure what he would have done with a human who treated Aziraphale with disrespect. Nothing good, he was sure of that much. Possibly something that made him start drinking again.

For a long time, he just ran his hands over the books and wept. Aziraphale wouldn’t get to touch them again. Aziraphale wouldn’t get to read them again.

He didn’t notice—very unlike him, he  _ should _ keep track of everyone around him, even humans—he didn’t notice that the landlady was in the doorway until she made a soft, sad sound. “It’s like that, is it.”

“It’s like that,” Crowley choked out.

“You’ll be the—what, the brother, then? You don’t resemble each other in the slightest. It’s all right, Mr. Fell. I’ll take care of it all. Get this lot packed up, so you can take it with you. And don’t worry a bit about the rent past last month. My Mr. Fell was a good lodger, the best I’ve ever had, and he was more than generous enough to keep my Ned off the streets—that’s my boy, you know, apprenticed to a cooper now, he didn’t want to be at first but I told him, a cooper’s a solid trade, the world always has need of barrels—“ Crowley wasn’t listening, and she could tell he wasn’t listening, and she trailed off awkwardly. “Well, he’ll be waiting for you in Heaven, that’s for certain, Mr. Fell. I’ll just go find a chest for all of these. Er, if you could supply the money for a chest, it would make it easier—we live a bit hand-to-mouth around here—“

Crowley passed over the money. “‘Waiting in Heaven,’” he repeated bitterly.

“He was a very good man, Mr. Fell.”

“I’m not.”

But he started thinking as he waited for the woman to come back. Waiting in Heaven.

He had assumed that Aziraphale had been  _ destroyed. _ But when you came down to it, that wasn’t entirely certain, was it? The flash of light that had destroyed him had nothing of Hellfire in it. If Heaven had other ways to destroy an angel—well, if Heaven had other ways to destroy an angel, Crowley wouldn’t  _ know, _ they wouldn’t advertise that sort of thing even to their own. But there was a chance that Aziraphale had been merely discorporated.

If he had been discorporated, by one of his own—that was still bad. It meant he was in deep trouble with Heaven. It meant that he wouldn’t be coming back to Earth. What would they do with an angel they had caught associating with a demon?

Heaven didn’t torture the way Hell did. Aziraphale had been very definite on that point. But that didn’t mean they couldn’t lock Aziraphale away—away from other angels, away from books, away from anything to use his delightful, meticulous mind on—and that would be as bad as torture in its way. What would Aziraphale do, in a blank white room? How would that affect him? How bad would it get, knowing that they never meant to make a door, never meant to let him back out?

That—was almost a nastier thought than destruction.

Except not, because there was a chance that Crowley could do something about it. Not much of a chance, but some.

§

Crowley tracked down the first angel in sixteen sixty-six.

Everything was on fire. Everything was on fire, and Crowley was trying to get back to the lodging where he had stored Aziraphale’s precious books, when he smelled angelic power—not Aziraphale’s power, nothing familiar, but a more metallic miracle taste. He turned on his heel and ran for it.

The angel was holding a human, and the human was holding a club. From what Crowley could gather from the captive human’s shouting, he thought that there were Dutch saboteurs about—and, indeed, there was a girl, barely seventeen, backed up against the wall of a building. Great. Humans couldn’t concentrate on the disaster, they had to find a  _ culprit, _ and attack the culprit, and there were going to be riots on top of the fire.

Crowley charged into a nearby building, ignoring the flames, and appropriated their longest, sharpest kitchen knife. Emerged, soot in his hair, and focused on the angel. The angel was still there. The human with the club was walking away, looking dazed, and the angel was concentrating on keeping it that way.

And then the angel wasn’t concentrating anymore, because Crowley had driven the knife into her from behind. “Thisss,” he whispered in her ear, “is  _ my _ fire. Do you understand?”

Shocked eyes rolled to meet his. She managed to turn her head, somewhat.

“In all these years, Aziraphale is the only angel who ever managed to thwart me.  _ You _ don’t sstand a chance. So run back to Heaven, little sservant, and tell them that Crowley is burning down London and sending all its sinners to Hell, and tell them that you couldn’t stop me.”

He slid the body off the knife. It dissolved. The golden angelic blood steamed off the knife and was gone.

Well, Crowley thought, message delivered. He hoped she gave a meticulous report. Documented every word.

He hoped the Archangels were, at least, confused. They had caught Aziraphale associating with Crowley, he was sure of it—but maybe he could convince them that there was more to it than that, that Aziraphale was the only thing keeping him from rampaging across the world and that they’d better send him back down, peculiar methods or no.

He just had to do it a few more times.

The Dutch girl stared at Crowley, gone past terror to a place of mute, frozen incomprehension. “Get out,” Crowley said. “Run before they come back.”

A blank, blue-eyed stare.

“You are in  _ danger _ here,  _ run.” _

Nothing.

Crowley raised the knife, brandishing it, and the girl’s frozen fear broke. She shrieked and ran, shouting something in accented English about a slasher, a murderer, a sorcerer, the one who started the fire.

Crowley sighed and threw the knife aside. He didn’t want to kill anyone, but—it wouldn’t hurt if this fire destroyed something important, would it? Especially since he was taking credit for it now.

St. Paul’s. The church. Hell always liked it when demons took out a church.  _ Discorporated an angel, destroyed a church, _ that would look nice in his report. Oh, and  _ blamed ethnic minorities, incited riots, _ since the humans were already doing that themselves—that wouldn’t hurt.

He was writing the report in the back of his mind as he ran back to save Aziraphale’s books.


	3. Searching

He really shouldn’t do this, Ezra thought. Definitely shouldn’t.

There were rules, that was the thing. Ezra might find himself out of sync with many of society’s rules, he might not know when to stop talking about things, or when not to take things seriously, but he understood the rules of not being creepy. And it was distinctly creepy to track down a customer that he’d seen once.

Even if that customer had slapped down three hundred pounds for a purchase of under fifty. That was his problem. Ezra should just take the windfall.

Definitely.

Somewhat to Ezra’s surprise, Anthony J. Crowley was in the phone book.

He fought with himself for days. Three days, to be exact. Ezra knew enough of religion and folklore to find all sorts of symbolism in that, if he cared to look. It wasn’t until the third day that he acknowledged it to be a losing battle.

Finally, after he locked the shop for the night, he picked up the phone. Hesitated for a long time over the number, dial tone buzzing in his ear, and dialed.

“If you’re calling to tell me that I’ve won a vacation in the Bahamas, I will put highly aggressive eels in all your plumbing. Ever been bitten on the arse by an eel?”

Ezra blinked, then rallied. “I’m not calling about—“

“Ang—Ezra.” It sounded as if he’d been punched.

“Er, yes. Yes, it’s me. I’m calling because—“

“You shouldn’t have called me.”

“You left—“

“Don’t call again.”

“I need to give you your money back,” Ezra said in a rush, certain that Crowley was about to hang up.

There was a pause on the other end of the line, and for a moment, Ezra was certain that Crowley had abandoned the phone. Then he said, “Keep it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“‘Course you can. Buy yourself something nice. A book. An expensive meal. A—“ An inarticulate noise of frustration. “I don’t even know what you  _ like, _ this time—“ He cut himself off.

“That would be completely improper,” Ezra said.

“Improper.”

“Taking money that doesn’t belong to me, that I didn’t earn.”

Crowley’s voice changed subtly. “When you think about it, though,” he said, “who does it harm?”

“Besides you?”

“Believe me, I won’t even notice. Who does it harm? Really? You can see that the money does good in the world—you can tip generously, or support a struggling business, or things that a rich arsehole like me wouldn’t even think of. You doing a good deed with that money is significantly more likely than  _ me _ doing a good deed with that money. Don’t you have a moral obligation to keep it?”

“No, I don’t! I wouldn’t—I wouldn’t feel right.” Entirely a lie. Right now, Ezra’s being was focused on  _ get him back to the shop, _ and he didn’t know why, and it was frightening him a little bit.

“What if I told you it was a gift?”

“You would somewhat undermine the theory that you don’t do anything generous with your money,” Ezra told him. “And I don’t see that it’s appropriate for me to be accepting gifts from you before we know each other better.”

Crowley made a frustrated noise. “We’re not going to know each other better. I should never have come into your shop. I just—“ This time, the noise was pained, and Ezra found himself leaning forward, longing to do something to relieve it. “Look. I already told you. I lost someone. All right? A long time ago. And there are things that remind me—and what I do about those reminders is my business. My problem. If I decide to leave three hundred pounds for a book I like, or tip five hundred percent on a plate of oysters, then I can. My choice.”

Ezra thought about it, cradling the phone against his ear. “If you won’t take the money back,” he said, “will you at least tell me what you thought of  _ The Mark of Zorro? _ If you’ve read it. Have you read it?” Ezra shouldn’t assume that people consumed books with the single-mindedness that he did.

There was silence at the other end of the phone. Then Crowley said, “It was perfect.”

“Oh.” He should be more articulate than that. “I’m glad.”

“California. We never went to California together, so it was—removed. But at the same time, it—there was so much—it made me smile. I don’t remember when I smiled that much.”

“Would you consider coming back to the shop? I could find you another book.”

“I can’t.” It came out as a near sob. “I can’t do this. I can’t—it would hurt you. In the end.”

“I’m willing to take that risk,” Ezra said, truthfully. Whatever this was—and he had no idea what this was—he was willing to throw himself into it without a parachute.

“I’m not. Goodbye, Ezra.”

_ “No, wait!  _ I’m—“

Dial tone.

Ezra stared at the phone receiver for a long time before he put it back in its cradle.

§

Ezra hesitated for more than three days before making his next move. At least with the money, he’d had an  _ excuse. _

Then he went searching.

The editions of the book that he really wanted, the ones where you could practically feel the history in the leather binding, were thousands of pounds. Still, he found a handsome hardback edition with color plates. Packaged it up, took out a piece of stationary, and wrote a note.

Several minutes later, he crumpled that up and started on another note.

And a third.

The problem was, he didn’t know what to  _ say. _ The things he  _ wanted _ to say— _ come back, please come back, all I want to do is talk with you until we suddenly realize it’s morning, I don’t know how you suddenly became my North Star but I feel lost in the fog without you— _ all that was impossible. But he was already violating the bounds of propriety. He was already shoving himself, unwanted, into someone else’s life. Ezra could coast through life on politeness and platitudes, so suddenly finding himself in a place where they wouldn’t work—it was terrifying.

This whole thing was terrifying. How had his life suddenly realigned itself around a stranger?

_ Dear Mr. Crowley. _ That was where he started. He couldn’t justify  _ Anthony, _ and even though  _ Crowley _ seemed most comfortable, it also had a peculiar familiarity to it, as if they were gentleman acquaintances in some turn-of-the-last-century club. He didn’t like the  _ Mister _ in there. He couldn’t justify leaving it out.

_ I understand that you probably intended your generous gift to be used for my own enjoyment. However, as I told you during our telephone call, I could not quite justify such a thing to myself. This, then, is my solution. I admit that I don’t know enough about you to find a perfect match, but I have been told that literature is the one thing in the world I have good instincts for. I think you will enjoy  _ Ivanhoe.  _ It is dated in some ways, and storytelling styles have changed much since it was written, but it contains many of the same elements as  _ The Mark of Zorro: _ a hero confronting a hostile establishment with martial prowess and cleverness. _

_ I understand that our phone call upset you greatly. I confess I am not entirely certain why, but I would do anything to avoid causing you further distress. If you truly do not wish to hear from me again, I will not communicate with you further. But I am not certain that is what you actually want. _

That was a bit presumptuous, wasn’t it? Actually, it was very, very presumptuous. Ezra nearly tore up the letter—fourth draft, this one—but then decided to continue, just to see where the letter went. He could always go back and write it again after he finished.

_ I would deeply enjoy discussing literature with you. In my work, I encounter two main groups of people: those who care primarily about books that have been published recently, and those who care primarily about works that are deemed significant by whatever nebulous entity adjudicates significance in literature. You, in contrast, pursue what brings you enjoyment. I find it refreshing. I would love the chance to find more books for you. _

Was putting the word  _ love _ in the letter too much? It probably was.

_ At any rate, please enjoy the book. If you wish to talk to me after reading it, I include my phone number and my home address for correspondence. Also, I can always be found at the bookshop. _

There it was. Too stiff, too formal, too old-fashioned—Ezra knew perfectly well that he was off-puttingly old-fashioned, from his speech to his handwriting. But it was done. And he didn’t think he could do it any better.

Could he?

He put Draft Four to the side, and spent several more pages of stationary proving to himself that, no, he couldn’t.

Very well. It would have to do. Package it up and send it.

He packaged it up and sent it.

§

Ezra didn’t entirely expect a reply. The lack of one wore on him anyway.

This was ridiculous. This made no  _ sense. _ This shattering, insatiable longing for a stranger.

It was at least partly a sexual longing, which took Ezra deeply by surprise. Ezra had never particularly understood  _ passion, _ had assumed for a long time that it was a literary device, but he had eventually come to accept that it was part of the world and that, for some reason, he had simply never felt it.  _ Don’t bother talking to him, he likes books better. _

Ezra had nothing against sex. Had even tried it, a few times back in university, and while it wasn’t necessarily better than lobster thermidor, that was mostly because lobster thermidor didn’t come with potential bitterness when the prospective relationship inevitably foundered.  _ Don’t bother talking to him, he likes books better. _ Wanting sex with Crowley—well, Ezra had long ago made peace with the fact that whatever he might be, it wasn’t straight. But that wasn’t the biggest part of whatever-this-was. Whatever-this-was was so much bigger than that.

What he wanted was to see Crowley smile, and know that it had been because of him.

What he wanted was to find out what Crowley loved, and use every connection he’d ever made to track it down, and present it gift-wrapped, and see the start of surprise as Crowley realized what it was.

What he wanted was connection. A touch, a held hand, a thumb rubbed over knuckles.

What he wanted was to look into Crowley’s eyes. He didn’t know what color they were, and it bothered him. It also bothered him that he felt like he  _ knew _ what color they were, that it was on the tip of his tongue, or the tip of his mind, but every time he made a suggestion—blue? Brown? Hazel?—his brain returned,  _ no, don’t be ridiculous, they’re— _

They’re what? he demanded of himself. They’re what?

No answer.

It didn’t matter, he told himself. It didn’t matter, because Crowley was never coming back.

It hurt like a stab wound to think that, and so he thought it again, prodding the wound, like a soldier trying to comprehend that there really was a hole in him. Crowley was never coming back.

Maybe it was something Ezra had done.

It wasn’t  _ just _ something that Ezra had done. He knew that. Crowley’s talk of someone he’d lost—the person must have died, Ezra decided. A breakup, even a devastating one—surely that would come with some amount of relief. Wouldn’t it? The fact that Ezra’s university breakups had been a relief, Ezra realized, wasn’t necessarily indicative of anything. But the devastation, the raw grief—that said  _ death _ to Ezra.

Crowley was never coming back. If the absence of a stranger could hurt like this, how much the death of someone you loved? Ezra couldn’t imagine.

Ezra reminded Crowley of someone who had died. Or Ezra’s books reminded Crowley of someone who had died. Something unbalanced inside Ezra whispered,  _ I’ll sell the bookshop, then, _ and he shocked himself with it. Of course he wouldn’t. Of course he shouldn’t. This mad impulse to reorder his entire life for someone he had met once—it was unhealthy, that was what it was, it was unhealthy and he should probably back away as far as he could.

Crowley was never coming back, and it hurt, and it didn’t stop hurting.

Ezra got drunk, some nights. He regretted it bitterly in the morning. He wondered uneasily what he was doing to himself. Would he notice it, if dependency started to creep up on him? Would he notice if he took the edge off his mind, killing enough neurons to notice?

He got drunk anyway. And then dragged himself to the bookshop, which seemed less welcoming and more a paean to his inadequacies, and sat behind his cash register, and dealt listlessly with customers. Once or twice, there were people that he actually wanted to help. A seventeen-year-old girl, newly dating another seventeen-year-old girl and looking for queer romance. An old man looking for a series from his childhood, which turned out to be  _ The Borrowers. _ Helping others would keep him sane, Ezra told himself. He didn’t need anything for himself. Not really. He had the bookshop and that was enough.

Crowley was never coming back.

And then there was a day, a cold, miserable, rainy day when nobody came in. Ezra didn’t want anyone to come in because they might make him move from the desk where his cash register sat, where he was hiding a space heater and studiously ignoring the warnings about how close you were supposed to get to them or how carefully you were supposed to watch the benighted things. The shop’s heating had never been entirely adequate in this corner, but it was the best place for the cash register, so he stayed, counting the minutes until closing. Half an hour until closing. Twenty-nine minutes until closing. Twenty-eight and a half minutes until closing, and what was wrong with him, that he wasn’t lost in a book by now? Heavens, he hadn’t even been  _ reading _ as much as normal, wrestling instead with this unnameable thing with—

The bell jingled.

Ezra looked up, and for a moment wondered if he had gone entirely around the twist and was hallucinating.

Crowley was standing in the doorway. He looked exactly the same as last time, dressed in black, dark glasses—who wore dark glasses in this sort of weather? He didn’t even look as if he had walked through the rain. His hair was dry.

Ezra sat frozen, and he thought that Crowley was frozen too, for just a moment. Then Crowley said, “I liked the book.”

“Oh, I’m so glad!” A simple declaration like that shouldn’t make Ezra  _ beam, _ should it, and yet he could tell that he was beaming.

“Don’t suppose you have any others.”

The last thing Ezra was going to admit was that he had spent hours considering what book to recommend if Crowley came back. “Well, it is a bookshop,” he said. “Let me see if I can find something that suits you.”


	4. Finding Aziraphale

It was 1680, and Crowley was looking at a magnificent comet.

Comets had not, strictly speaking, been Crowley’s department. But he knew the basics. You didn’t work on as many celestial projects as Crowley had without picking up a bit here and there. He could tell the humans things that would knock their hats off, if he felt like it. Instead, he settled in on the hillside to observe the celestial phenomenon, feeling lonely.

He kept doing it. He kept thinking,  _ wait till I tell Aziraphale about this, _ and then remembering he wouldn’t.

You would think it would get  _ better. _ Humans coped with this sort of thing, didn’t they? They started out sad, and then found some sort of equilibrium. That widow, the chattery landlady that had helped Crowley with Aziraphale’s books—she had lost a husband, and she was happy enough to chase another man.

Maybe it was the fact that Aziraphale might be up in Heaven, suffering God-only-knew-what. And so far, Crowley’s pointed angel-killing attempts hadn’t been noticed by anyone.

What if Aziraphale really was gone? The thought that he might still exist somewhere was keeping Crowley from lying down and just  _ stopping. _ What if it was a lie?

What if Heaven had caught on to what Crowley was doing? What if they realized that he was killing angels because he wanted Aziraphale back? What if, in fact, he was entirely transparent?

It was a familiar fear, one that Hell engendered.  _ Everyone knows what you’re thinking. _ In Hell, you learned to guard every thought, because every thought was a vulnerability. The worst part of Hell’s endless corridors wasn’t the dripping, or the mold, or the temperature. It was the feeling of eyes on your back, and the knowledge that the gaze could easily turn into a blade if someone thought it would make them feel better for a bit.

And looking at the comet wasn’t doing any good, because that made Crowley think of stars. Think of falling. He remembered the first moment he had seen a meteor shower, the wrenching, blinding pain of it, the thought,  _ of course. Why wouldn’t She. Did you really think She would let something tainted by you remain in her sky? _ An instant later, sanity set in and he realized that it couldn’t possibly be actual  _ stars _ falling, it had to be celestial debris, but the ache stayed. The heavens were cold comfort—

“Beautiful, isn’t it?”

Crowley made a noise like he had swallowed his tongue, and spun.

It was Aziraphale.

It wasn’t Aziraphale.

It was Aziraphale, only—not quite.

For one thing, the corporation was considerably younger. Twenty-something. The same face, but smoother, leaner.

And he didn’t glow. Crowley couldn’t sense his power. Crowley couldn’t sense that this person was anything other than human.

Because, Crowley realized after an endless, frozen moment of staring, he was. Entirely human. Nothing of the angel about him at all.

Except—he held himself the same way, and his expressions were the same, and his surprise and discomfort looked the same, blinking back at Crowley even as Crowley stared at him as if he was Jesus returned (something that Crowley had missed, drunk and alone).

“I’m sorry, did I—disturb something?”

“Nnn,” Crowley slurred, and then, “No. No, you’re fine.” Aziraphale—the human boy—was still staring at him. “Lost in thought.”

The human boy had a sketch pad and charcoal.

“You draw?” Aziraphale didn’t draw. Not that Crowley had ever seen, anyway.

“Nature illustrator,” the boy said proudly. “My professor wanted me to capture this event specifically. It’ll be a print in his book.” A slight wiggle of pleasure, and oh,  _ that _ was Aziraphale, definitely Aziraphale. “It’ll be difficult to capture, this comet. A lot of my experience is with plants and animals. My professor does a little bit of everything, you understand. Natural philosophy of all sorts.”

“What’s your name?”

“Feldt. Adelard Feldt. You?”

“Crowley,” Crowley said. “Um . . . Anthony.” He had called himself Antonio in Italy for a while, and those were happy memories.

“You’re English, aren’t you?”

“More or less.” Rather less, in fact. “I travel a lot. You’re a student, I take it?”

“At Altdorf,” Feldt confirmed. “Close to paradise, as far as I’m concerned. You should see the library! But then, I’ve always been told I’m odd like that.”

“It’s not odd,” Crowley said. “It’s not odd. Having a passion, that’s—“ He shouldn’t say  _ beautiful. _ He deployed words like that around Aziraphale only with great care. Never suggesting,  _ you. You’re beautiful. You are beautiful in my sight, and I will help you, and I will protect you, and I will keep you from being lonely— _

He certainly hadn’t managed it, had he?

But—this boy. This boy who had more than just Aziraphale’s face, who had Aziraphale’s  _ manner. _

If an angel  _ was  _ destroyed—not just killed, but annihilated—what happened to them? Was there a possibility that wasn’t the end?

God didn’t seem to like utter destruction. It was one of the constants of the cosmos, perhaps. Instead of just blasting the Rebellion out of existence, She had cast them down, severed them from herself—but kept them as part of the universe. Human souls, whether good or bad, had someplace to go. Energy changed, but didn’t vanish. So—what happened to a destroyed angel?

Might they come back,  _ somehow, _ as a human?

Wild speculation. But at this point, all Crowley had was wild speculation.

The boy was looking at Crowley with concern. “Am I bothering you?”

“Definitely  _ not.” _

“Oh, good. I can’t always tell. Er, I’m supposed to be sketching right now, I’m afraid. I hope you don’t mind—“

“May I watch you?” Crowley asked.

Expressions crossed Aziraphale—Adelard’s face, complicated and fluid, just like they were supposed to be. He had thought many times, Aziraphale would never survive Hell, not as open as he was. One of many reasons why Crowley was so careful with him; he didn’t want to find out, the hard way, that angels could still fall. And the un-Hellishness of Aziraphale was part of what Crowley—loved, might as well admit it.

This human was the same way.

And he was barely more than a child, and Crowley was ancient, he made the hills look young, and he was a manipulator to the bone. Whatever his relationship with Aziraphale, Crowley couldn’t have it with this human.

Unless there was some way to get Aziraphale back.

“I’d be honored,” Adelard said.

§

It wasn’t difficult to find Adelard Feldt at Altdorf. Crowley had the name, he had the university, and humans didn’t actually have a choice about giving him information. He found the boy easily.

It gave him an uneasy feeling. But he wasn’t sure how to quantify it.

He found Adelard in the library, of course. There was a smudge of charcoal on his forehead, as if he had been working hard at his illustrations and wiped his brow absently with his drawing hand. Crowley wondered for a moment what the humans thought of his hair, still that distinctive, near-glowing shade that passed for white on an older man, but looked incongruous on a younger one.

“Mr. Crowley!” Adelard seemed surprised, and his eyes showed confusion. Aziraphale’s eyes, those, with a peculiar ability to change color with the light. “I thought you were just in town for the comet.”

Crowley shrugged. “Comet’s still here, isn’t it? And so am I.” He pulled out a chair and sat down across from Adelard. “What’re you reading?”

Aziraphale-like, Adelard was delighted to talk about what he was reading.


	5. Losing Aziraphale

Insinuating himself into Adelard’s life—that wasn’t difficult either. Crowley was good at slipping in places. Some of it was practice. Some of it, he felt, was a sort of metaphorical resonance of being a serpent. Snakes slithered in. It was what they did. The danger of a snake wasn’t that it would charge at you like a lion, or a boar; the danger of a snake was that it was  _ here all along, _ in a place you thought safe. Serpents in every garden.

Anthony Crowley, Crowley decided, was a visiting scholar. A visiting scholar who would naturally spend some time in the library, and thus naturally run into Adelard, and thus naturally talk to him about books. And so they began a friendship. Tentative, and nothing like the friendship Crowley had had with Aziraphale, but a friendship.

There had to be some way to get Aziraphale back.

It was becoming an obsession, in much the same way Crowley’s plan to track down angels and discorporate them had become an obsession. There had to be some way to get Aziraphale back.

And Crowley didn’t care what that might do to Adelard. He didn’t. The fact that the boy looked just like Aziraphale, and moved like Aziraphale, and as far as he could tell, had Aziraphale’s personality—that was just because Aziraphale was lost somewhere inside him.

Unless it was all coincidence and Crowley was going mad.

Adelard was the son of a rich burgher, a lace-seller, who financed Adelard’s way into university mostly because he didn’t know what else to do with him. He had hoped that Adelard would become a churchman, and Adelard had seriously considered it. He was pious, in the human sense, with a reverence for what he supposed to be God’s Written Word, and his passion for nature illustration came in part from a wish to capture the beauty of God’s creation. “Each stem,” he told Crowley once, “each flower perfectly made, even if it looks haphazard or disorganized at an idle glance. A daisy is divinity at work. It’s all very—“

“Ineffable?” Crowley suggested somewhat sourly.

“Just the word, yes!” As usual, Aziraphale—Adelard—was oblivious to sarcasm.

Except he wasn’t, always. He had learned, as he lived in the world. Adelard wasn’t just Aziraphale. He had been—reset, almost. Some of his qualities reverted to their most basic state. As if sarcasm-obliviousness was the way Aziraphale was  _ made, _ and learning to deal with it was something he had layered on top, and now that he had been reborn as a human, he had—lost his layers? Perhaps? Crowley was running out of metaphors.

That was one reason why Crowley was desperate to get Aziraphale back. The layers Aziraphale had made himself, the time they had spent together, that time had shaped him, and Adelard wasn’t the  _ same. _

Which was why he found himself doing research.

Crowley wasn’t naturally suited to research. That was Aziraphale’s specialty. Crowley preferred to get by on instinct and improvisation. Aziraphale would have been  _ better _ at this.

Aziraphale wasn’t here. So Crowley researched. Read until the letters danced in front of his eyes.

Finally, on a summer evening when storms lay in the distance and flashed ominously without any audible thunder, Crowley crept into Adelard’s meager apartments and drew a circle on the floor. A circle, candles, and writing in the ancient language, the nameless tongue that angels and demons shared.

He finished up just as Adelard’s key rattled in the door. Good. Well, not  _ good _ good, but beneficial. Crowley needed him here.

He knew Adelard too well, by now, to suppose he had been out drinking with his comrades. Adelard didn’t quite fit in with the other students. He knew it, and they knew it, and it troubled him.

Really, Crowley was doing him a favor. He would be happier being an angel again.

Adelard came in and stopped dead. “Mr. Crowley? What—“

He stopped as Crowley looked up. Crowley’s glasses were on Adelard’s desk, behind him, and even in twilight, he knew Adelard could see his eyes.

“Sit down,” Crowley said gently. This might be easier sitting down.

“I don’t—“

Crowley gestured, and Adelard was in a chair.

Adelard didn’t scream. He clearly wanted to, but he was like Aziraphale, he was brave, brave with the impulse to talk his way through rather than try any foolish attack. “I’m not sure exactly what’s going on here.”

“This isn’t you,” Crowley said, gesturing to Adelard. “This isn’t  _ real. _ This, you—you’re a disguise of sorts. Disguised even from yourself. I’m going to free you.” He lit a candle.

“Free me—from being me.”

“Exactly.” Crowley moved slowly around the circle, carefully lighting each taper.

Adelard’s panic surged. Crowley could feel it. “If I’m not me, who would I be?”

Crowley turned to him. “My best friend.” He could hear the naked longing in his own voice. “The one being in the entire universe that I trust. The  _ best _ being in the entire universe—better than all the angels in Heaven, better than all the demons in Hell. The person I’ve known since the Garden of Eden, the person who—“ Careful. Careful. If Aziraphale remembered this, Crowley would spook him with this sort of talk. “Never mind. Just—brace yourself. I don’t know how unpleasant this will get.”

Crowley turned back to the circle, pricked his finger, and dripped black blood onto the pattern.

The entire circle lit up. Red, dark smoky red, the color of Crowley’s power, and how much was that going to hurt Aziraphale? Never mind, at least he’d have him back. Crowley fed power into the diagram through the spot of blood.

From behind him, Adelard’s voice, high-pitched and panicked.  _ “What are you?” _

“A demon. A demon of Hell. You  _ know _ this, Aziraphale. Or, at least, you’ll know it when I have you summoned out of there—“

The spell drank, and drank. Crowley could feel himself being emptied. Being bled. Was this how humans felt when they were wounded, as if their life was pouring out? Maybe Aziraphale could tell him how humans felt, now.

Except the spell wasn’t finding Aziraphale.

It should have grabbed onto him right away. He was  _ there. _ It wasn’t like trying to summon between planes. But the spell was acting as if he was nowhere. As if Crowley was trying to summon something imaginary.

And still the spell drank. It could drain him down to nothing, if Crowley let it. Drain out everything he was. And he was willing to let it, he would pay the price, if it just  _ gave him Aziraphale, _ but it wasn’t. It didn’t.

He turned. Adelard was staring at him in terror, but there was no more than that. There was no pull.

Crowley couldn’t summon Aziraphale out of Adelard. Whatever had happened, whatever She or whoever had done to him, it didn’t work like that.

“Why?” Crowley’s voice came out rough and broken. “Why are you still him? Why aren’t you you?”

Adelard shook his head very slightly.

_ “Why are you doing this to me? _ I want you back, there’s nothing I want more than you back, why aren’t you—why can’t you become—“

The spell was draining him away. Making it hard to stand. In a moment, he would be too weak to snuff the candles.

He snuffed the candles, all of them at once, with a gesture. The light died, leaving both of them in dimness. “Every day I live without him, every  _ second _ I live without him, that’s one more eternity than I ever wanted to live, so  _ why can’t you be him? _ You  _ are _ him, I can feel it, I can see it, every time I meet your eyes it’s him, so why can’t I have him back? Why can’t you—“

“Please stop,” Adelard whispered, and then, “In Jesus’s holy Name. Leave me.”

He was terrorizing the boy.

Well, he was a demon, terror was part of what he  _ did, _ but he was terrifying this near-Aziraphale. This nearly-his-friend.

“I—“ Crowley turned away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—I’m sorry.” And he fled, out the door, down the stairs, and into the street.

It wasn’t until a drunkard flinched away from him that he realized he had left his glasses on Adelard’s desk. And he was too weak to miracle them to hand.

§

Adelard became a priest.

Crowley didn’t let himself be seen, when he lurked around the human, but he thought maybe Adelard knew anyway.

Adelard became a priest, and spent much of his time on holy ground, and Crowley couldn’t follow him there—well, he  _ could, _ but he would lose access to a good portion of his powers and hurt himself besides, so the idea lacked appeal. Adelard was famed for his piety, as well as his gentleness. Humans actively maneuvered to confess their sins to Father Adelard rather than a different priest, because they said that he  _ understood. _

The thing that made Crowley writhe inside like a speared snake, though, was that Adelard didn’t seem happy. Haunted, rather.

Crowley didn’t know if Adelard was haunted by  _ him— _ by his words, his actions—or by the loss of his scientific endeavors. Adelard had loved it, loved adding to knowledge, loved making the world more understood. And now that he had become a priest, all he had were the same words over and over, rituals without discovery.

Had he become a priest to shelter from Crowley?

It was almost better than the alternative—that he had become a priest to hide from  _ himself, _ to hold at bay something he imagined inside him. Crowley had realized, much later, that when he described Aziraphale to Adelard, he had never once used the word  _ angel. _ Adelard had every reason to suspect that Crowley’s lost love was a demon. Why wouldn’t he? Demons didn’t love angels.

Whatever the reason, Adelard became a priest, and he never drew again.


	6. Acquaintanceship

The rules were like iron. It was driving Ezra a bit mad.

Crowley arrived, erratically and without notice, just before closing time. He would allow Ezra to make him tea. He would sit down, and they would talk about books. When the tea was finished, he would take another book. Ezra would try to tell him he didn’t have to pay for it. He would throw down an entirely random amount of money by the till and leave again.

Asking when he would be back, or even if he would be back, was against the rules.

Asking personal questions about Crowley himself was against the rules. Ezra made the mistake of inquiring what he did for a living. It prompted a full thirty seconds of silence and then a lunge out the door.

So Ezra concentrated on books. He concentrated on learning Crowley’s tastes, as precisely as he could, so that he could hear  _ it was perfect _ again.

Crowley liked cleverness. He liked heroes that outwitted their opposition. Ezra had thought at first that he had a taste for swashbuckling and swords, and that was partially true, but a good dramatic rescue seemed to meet his approval whether swords were involved or not.

He liked antiheroes. He liked James Bond, knowing the character mostly from the movies. He went very quiet when Ezra explained Ian Fleming’s World War Two background, but he left with  _ Casino Royale _ and came back to say he’d enjoyed it. Most heroes with a ruthless or scoundrel streak held his interest.

He had stringent standards for science fiction. That one was a little bit of a surprise. Ezra had thought that a good yarn would catch his attention regardless of the backdrop, but it turned out that bad astronomy was a dealbreaker. (Unless it was so far removed from the real world as to be essentially fantasy. The Barsoom books were rejected, not because of the dodgy science, but because nobody in them had much of a brain. And something else that Crowley said made Ezra think he might be a  _ Star Wars _ fan. As someone who had never watched  _ Star Wars, _ Ezra was at something of a pop culture disadvantage, but he had doubts about the scientific accuracy of the films.)

“How about you?” Crowley asked, one evening when they were sitting across from each other, Ezra’s hands wrapped around a slightly-too-hot mug of tea. “What do you read?”

“Things that deal with religion,” Ezra said promptly. “Things that are full of history, that make me feel as if I was there. Things . . .” He hesitated. But he didn’t actually want to hide his ridiculous romantic side from Crowley. He wanted Crowley to know all of him, and never mind whether that was a good idea or not. “Things about saving the world.”

“Really.” Crowley was sometimes hard to read behind the glasses. But Ezra thought that caught his attention.

“Not things that involve saving the world through war, though,” Ezra amended. “Your modern fantasy, the stuff that wants to be just like  _ Lord of the Rings, _ it often has good defeating evil by fighting it, by being stronger or at least more lucky in the final fight. And I—find that I dislike that. It entirely misses the point of the work that they’re trying to emulate. Much of modern fantasy—well, I find it not to my taste.”

“Maybe I should read  _ Lord of the Rings,” _ Crowley mused.

“I would start with  _ The Hobbit,” _ Ezra said. “Certainly, I can find you one of those. Do you want a version with Tolkien’s original illustrations? He wasn’t a master illustrator—I feel that he rather failed at drawing an imposing dragon—but he was tremendously keen that his hobbits not be interpreted as talking rabbits. I can get you—“

Crowley held up a hand, forestalling him. “Do you sell audiobooks?”

“Only when people sell them to  _ me,” _ Ezra said. “Which is less than you might think. I can’t guarantee that I’ll find  _ The Hobbit _ in audio today. I can look around for it. Do you prefer audiobooks?"

Crowley looked away. “Sometimes when I read for too long, the letters start to jump around. My eyes aren’t the best for that sort of thing.”

Ah, yes. Crowley’s eyes.

Ezra had never seen Crowley’s eyes, and the mystery was starting to get to him.

Something in him said that they would be the most beautiful eyes he had ever seen. Which was absurd, wasn’t it? Eyes were eyes. Ultimately, they weren’t any more significant to one’s personality than any other part of the body, for all that fiction wanted to make them into windows of the soul or signs of specialness. (Ezra had a passionate hatred for authors who signified an important character by making that character’s eyes violet. He had no idea where it came from.) What about hands, now—why weren’t people out there romanticizing hands?

Ezra wanted to romanticize Crowley’s hands. He wanted to  _ touch _ Crowley’s hands. To hold them. To feel Crowley’s palm pressed against his cheek.

Would they be calloused, or smooth?

It was an acquaintanceship. That was the thing. It was nothing more than that. It wasn’t going to move on to hand touches, because it just  _ wasn’t. _ Crowley clearly didn’t want to share anything with Ezra besides books, and that was the way it was going to be.

§

“Have you seen the movie they made out of  _ Treasure Island? _ Actually, scratch that, there have been dozens of movies. Have you seen  _ Treasure Planet? _ It’s a trip. Once you decide that the astronomy is actually  _ supposed _ to be that way, it’s loads of fun.”

“I don’t get out to movies often,” Ezra admitted. Boring. He was boring. There was really, really no reason for Crowley to be interested in him.

“‘Fifty years behind the times’ still has room for movies in it, you know.”

Ezra looked away. “I suppose I’m just not very adventurous.”

He could feel Crowley studying him closely. “Are you all right?”

“It’s nothing.”

“It’s not nothing.”

“I suppose I just worry about how people look at me,” Ezra admitted. “Not enough to change myself, so I suppose there’s no reason to complain about it. But I’m—aware how I come off. Old-fashioned, prissy, fat and ridiculous. I’ve been told often enough.”

Crowley went motionless. “Who said that to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It does.”

“All right, perhaps it does matter, but I’m not entirely comfortable passing along the information, if you must know!”

Was that too far? That was too far.

Instead of being insulted, though, a tiny flicker of a smile played over Crowley’s lips. “You think I’d have them whacked.”

“I wouldn’t presume to speculate,” Ezra said. “But I’m well aware that you don’t want me knowing what you do for a living, and you gave me two hundred pounds for an indifferent edition of  _ Treasure Island. _ You realize I’m saving your money to buy more books for you, don’t you? I’m not spending it.”

“I know perfectly well you aren’t spending it, and you  _ should. _ I know how much you like good food, and I know perfectly well that your bookshop doesn’t allow you to indulge that half as often as you like, because, let’s be blunt, you’re going broke. And I don’t mind giving you things. I  _ like _ it. No, the point is, I’m not in the mob and I’m not going to have your childhood bullies beheaded. Although I could probably arrange for a good plague of frogs. Would you like them to have a plague of frogs?”

“It’s tempting,” Ezra admitted.

A slightly wider smile. “I know it is.”

“But it’s entirely impractical as well as inappropriate.”

“Oh, come on.” Crowley moved his head, seemingly trying to regard him from multiple angles. “You’re addicted to books. You have  _ A Christmas Carol _ in here somewhere. Probably half a dozen different editions. You know as well as I do that putting people through harmless hardship is a classic technique for teaching them a lesson. Making them better, even. Look at it the right way, and you have a  _ moral obligation _ to wish a plague of frogs on them.”

“You have the oddest definition of  _ moral obligation _ that I’ve ever encountered,” Ezra told him.

“Also, it would be a lot of fun.”

“Not for the frogs,” Ezra sighed. “But thank you for trying.”

§

The truth was, Ezra would have happily gone out to a movie if Crowley went with him.

It was yet another thing Ezra didn’t recognize about himself. He had always thought that changing yourself because of someone you loved—let alone someone you weren’t even in a relationship with—was just a doorway to disaster. He had always thought that if you found yourself falling for someone with a sketchy background or an ominous mystery in their life, the sensible thing to do was  _ not to fall for them. _ Romantic literature to the side, he hadn’t expected it to be this—this involuntary.

It bothered him.

It fascinated him.

He didn’t think this was healthy. Not on his part. Probably not on Crowley’s.

The thought that  _ Crowley might not come back— _ which was a thought that kept Ezra company in his book-lined flat, every evening that Crowley didn’t appear—tightened around his chest like a steel cord.

It occurred to him that Crowley might be deliberately playing with his feelings. Manipulating him with the erraticness, with the implicit threat of leaving. He didn’t think it was true. Didn’t want it to be true. Would he be able to back away, if it were true?

No. No. Crowley was struggling with old wounds. Ezra could see that. Could sense that. There were moments when he almost could feel the scream trying to break out of Crowley’s throat. Every moment that Crowley spent with Ezra was a delicate balance between what he wanted and what he could bear, and disturbing that knife-edge equilibrium was courting disaster.

“For heaven’s sake use the money for something besides books,” Crowley said, one night, while dropping his usual haphazard collection of large bills on the counter.  _ “The Other Boleyn Girl _ is playing . You like history, don’t you? Go see that.”

“The book is not entirely historically accurate,” Ezra said. “And I tend to obsess on details like that. I wouldn’t get half as much enjoyment out of it as you would, my dear. That  _ Treasure Planet _ movie you mentioned last week, now—that one, I’m actually somewhat curious about. But I didn’t see it in any of the newspapers.”

Crowley was staring at him.

Even through the glasses, it was obvious that Crowley was staring at him.

Ezra wasn’t sure what he had  _ said, _ that was the trouble. He began to babble. “I suppose it’s old-fashioned of me to rely on the newspapers, isn’t it? It’s going to be all internet in a few years. Of course, it’s been a long time since I’ve looked through the movie listings. I may have missed something—“ Oh, dear. Had he implied that they should go to the movies  _ together? _ He hadn’t meant to imply that they should go to the movies together. That was crossing a boundary. Breaking a rule. “I didn’t mean to pressure you,” Ezra went on, hearing his voice go more and more nervous. “Obviously you wouldn’t care to—I mean—I probably wouldn’t be good company for a movie anyway. I haven’t gone to the movies with anyone since, oh, university, and I’m afraid I annoyed them very much at the time. But I do hope that you enjoy  _ The Other Boleyn Girl, _ whenever you see it and whoever you see it with—“

_ “Treasure Planet.” _

“What?”

“You want to see  _ Treasure Planet, _ we’ll go see  _ Treasure Planet.” _

“But it isn’t in the theaters.”

Crowley flashed a smirk. “Will be soon enough.”

Ezra’s heart leapt, then sank, then tried to do both at once. “I thought you didn’t want to—“ He shouldn’t say that. He shouldn’t sabotage himself. He shouldn’t remind Crowley of his wounds.

“I didn’t. I don’t. I don’t think this is a good idea. It’s just that I happen to be the nearest there is to a patron saint of  _ bad _ ideas.” Crowley turned away and stood there for a moment, head bent. “And besides,” he said finally, “there are whispers.  _ Time. _ I may not have enough time. Time’s almost up—“ He cut that strand off, which was unfortunate, because Ezra badly wanted to chase it wherever it led.  _ “Treasure Planet. _ It’s just a movie. Doesn’t have to mean anything we don’t want it to.”

“All right,” Ezra said carefully. “When?”

“Pick you up tomorrow at five. We’ll want dinner first.”

And he was gone, before Ezra could ask critical questions such as,  _ is this a date? _


	7. Out of the Bastille

The Reign of Terror was not Crowley’s fault. And this time, it wasn’t even a “peripherally involved but never intended  _ that” _ sort of thing. He’d been in America when he’d got the commendation. He’d done some very fast talking to explain  _ why _ he was in America, and been dispatched summarily back to France to keep the whole thing going.

Sometimes the things that humans did honestly shocked Crowley. And he was a  _ demon. _

The other shocking thing was that whatever appalling things the humans decided to do, it didn’t take them long to decide that it was normal. Mass executions, whatever; the shops had to open and the mail had to run. Which was why Paris, despite everything, felt more or less like Paris. Crowley resolved to get a glass of wine later and studiously ignore the carnage, just like the humans around him were doing.

That was when he felt a very faint prickle of alarm.

That by itself would have been enough to make him flee the scene immediately. Crowley hadn’t survived as long as he had by ignoring his instincts, and never mind that it made him look more jumpy than suave. But this alarm didn’t feel like  _ him. _

It felt, in fact, like an impossibly muted version of his Aziraphale-is-in-trouble sense. No holy glow, but a feeling as if someone were struggling, as if someone were frightened.

That was impossible. Aziraphale was gone.  _ Adelard _ was gone, died fifty-some years ago. His soul had presumably gone to Heaven. If he’d had a soul, being a reincarnation of an angel.

The tingle didn’t go away.

Crowley blessed under his breath and followed it.

It led, perhaps predictably, towards the Bastille.

§

There was a human who looked like Aziraphale locked up in the Bastille.

Like Adelard, the human didn’t just look like Aziraphale. He moved like him. Felt like him. This time, he looked perhaps a little older than Aziraphale had always kept his form.

“This is a mistake,” he was telling the executioner. “I am not an enemy of France. I have never broken the law. I agree with the goals of the Revolution, for Heaven’s sake, no matter what I think about its tactics! Honestly, what reason would I have to support the nobility? They’ve never given me reason to love them. Rather the opposite.”

“You are an aristo,” the executioner said calmly.

He wasn’t wearing aristocratic clothes. If anything, they looked rather worn. A commoner’s clothes.

“My  _ father _ was an aristo. He disowned me. I have no inheritance, no title. I have— _ stop _ that!” The executioner had just loosened the clothing around his neck. “If you would only  _ listen _ to me,” the human Aziraphale said desperately, “if someone would only  _ listen _ to me—“ He closed his eyes. “Animals! You’re behaving like animals!”

Crowley moved his hand sharply upward, clicked his fingers, and metaphorically body-slammed time sideways. For everyone but himself and the human. “Animals don’t cut each other’s heads off with clever machines,” he said, from behind the Aziraphale human. “Only humans do that.”

The Aziraphale human spun around. Looked at Crowley, eyes flickering over him. And then, rather slower, looked back to see that the executioner was, indeed, frozen.

After a long moment, he said, with a certain unnatural steadiness, “Do you count yourself in that number, sir?”

Aziraphale always was quick to absorb facts, even if he took a while to process them sometimes. “You mean, do I count myself as a human? Absolutely not. What’s your name?”

“Antoine Zarafell,” he said. “You?”

“Anthony Crowley. That’s not a French last name, Zarafell.”

“It isn’t from anywhere, I should think,” Antoine said. “I created it after some family troubles, some years ago. Of course, the current regime sees that as  _ living in hiding,  _ and never mind that I wouldn’t answer to my old name if someone called to me with it. How about yourself? You use an English name, but somehow I doubt that’s the whole story.”

“Not even half of it,” Crowley said. And then, because he didn’t know how this thing worked, “Do you remember living in Germany?”

Antoine looked guarded. “I’ve never lived in Germany.”

He certainly didn’t seem to remember Crowley. Which was good, considering the disaster Crowley had made of it last time. “No, I suppose you haven’t. Let’s go.” He clicked his fingers, making the cuffs fall off Antoine’s hands. Antoine jumped. As an afterthought, Crowley clamped the cuffs around the executioner’s wrists. “We can talk about it when we’re out of this pit.”

Antoine studied the executioner. And then, voice wavering only a little, he said, “Grateful as I am for the timely rescue, I have an objection to sending someone else to die in my place.”

“He’s a bloodthirsty nightmare of a human,” Crowley pointed out. “Not much to redeem, there, even if he felt like it, which he won’t. I can guarantee that he knows some of the people he executes don’t deserve death, and he lets the blade fall anyway, and what does that make him?”

“Nevertheless,” Antoine said. He hesitated. “You see, I’m rather—I’m somewhat—I happen to be a pacifist.  _ That _ was what lead to this—current unpleasantness. A neighbor spreading the word that I am unwilling to take up arms for France. The fact that my father was a nobleman, the fact that I briefly attended the École Militaire before I changed my name and took up my current life—those things came out once they began to investigate my background.”

“You’re a pacifist, and you’re willing to die for it,” Crowley translated.

“I suppose I must be. I must admit that I wasn’t entirely certain, before they came for me.”

“Hmm.” It was true that Aziraphale had always tended to resolve conflicts without violence, when he could. And he always seemed to regret the violence that his fellow angels committed, even if he didn’t do anything to stop them—not that Aziraphale had any way to stop someone like Sandalphon, once he got into smiting mode. “Don’t worry about him. He  _ works _ with these people. They’ll recognize him. Whether they frighten him a bit before they decide to admit that that they recognize him—that’s not my problem.”

Antoine thought about it, but Aziraphale was practical whatever his incarnation. “Yes, that’s fair.”

Crowley let them slip back into the flow of time, and led the way out of the Bastille.

§

Antoine Zarafell was as different from Adelard Feldt as you could get while still staying essentially  _ Aziraphale. _ Adelard had been earnestly excitable, friendly, never suspicious about why an older man was pursuing his friendship until the very end, when Crowley made his mistake. Antoine was guarded and scrupulously polite, as a human might be when meeting a supernatural being, but he had also been bruised by the world.

Coaxing his story out of him took some doing. Crowley bought him crepes to ease the process along, reasoning that Aziraphale had always had a taste for good food. Filtering the story, compensating for the fact that Aziraphale tended to understate things, Crowley got the impression of a strict military father with military ambitions for his son, which Antoine had tried faithfully to fulfill until a point where everything in him simply said  _ no, _ at which point he walked away from the École Militaire, incurred his father’s wrath, was cut off without a penny, and was forced to earn his own way in Paris, which he did with much hardship. Now, years later, he had an adequate profession as a wineseller, but he didn’t have enough money to allow him to leave Paris, and besides—

“Besides, your books are here,” Crowley guessed.

“I feel that you have me at something of a disadvantage,” Antoine said.

Well, why not tell the truth? Certainly deception hadn’t worked last time around. “I know you,” Crowley said. “Or rather, I knew who you used to be. It’s complicated. First of all, though, we have to get you out of Paris. I can deal with the books. Where do you want to live? England?”

“My English is terrible. But I suppose it might be the best place.”

“A lot of good books, in English,” Crowley tempted. “And plays. You’re going to love Shakespeare, once you get a chance to see the plays properly.”

“I still don’t understand,” Antoine said, “why you’re helping me. Who I used to be?”

“Do you believe in reincarnation?”

“I’m not entirely sure what I believe in,” Antoine admitted. “I suppose one might call me an agnostic.”

Another surprise. Of course, humans didn’t  _ know, _ not the way angels and demons did, but Crowley would have expected Aziraphale to keep enough of his angelic nature to believe in God.

But then, Crowley wouldn’t have expected Aziraphale to defy his family, either, or walk away from duty. Keep doing it until it ground him down to nothing, more likely. What Antoine had done with his father—that was supremely out of character.

Was being a human  _ changing _ Aziraphale?

How could it not?

If this went on, Aziraphale might become someone that Crowley couldn’t recognize as his angel. And he had no way to stop it.

“I knew you,” Crowley said, “in another life. I’m a bit older than I look.”

“Who was I?” Antoine said. “And how do you know it was me? If I were someone special—well, I don’t feel as if I could have been someone special."

“You were an angel,” Crowley said. “Literally. I don’t know what happened to you. You were  _ supposed _ to be immortal. The best I can figure out is, you were a victim of an attack, and you’ve been reborn as a human—twice so far.” He swallowed. “I want to get you back. I  _ need _ to get you back. But I don’t know how.”

Antoine sat frozen for a moment as he absorbed this. “Forgive me for being forward, but if I was an angel—are you the same?”

Moment of truth.

Moment of not-truth. No human would accept Crowley for what he was. “Similar,” Crowley said, “but I’m—afflicted. I have demon eyes, from an attack long ago—“ Technically correct, if you counted God’s actions against him as an attack. “It isn’t important. The important part is, I can’t petition Heaven for help on this. I’m considered an outcast. So if you and I want to solve this, we have to do it on our own.”

Antoine thought about it. “Could  _ I _ petition Heaven?”

Heaven had done this to him. “Probably not. I can’t see how, anyway. You don’t have a way to contact them, apart from praying like anyone else.” Which rarely worked, so it should be safe enough.

“First thing to try, I suppose,” Antoine reflected. “But I was raised with strict enough enough religious training to know that the Almighty is not famed for direct answers.”

Crowley studied him. “You’re taking this calmly.”

“I suspect I’m still absorbing it. I can hardly doubt you; you clearly have powers that the rest of us lack. And I must admit, I am deeply curious about this past life of mine.”

§

They went to England.

Antoine began to research his condition with the meticulousness that Crowley knew, and loved, and missed. Crowley had been so incredibly  _ stupid, _ with Adelard. Trying to solve it himself, without Aziraphale’s help—it had been doomed from the start. He was an improviser, not a scholar. He had cleverness, especially in a crisis, but he didn’t have Aziraphale’s precise, careful, incredibly thorough mind. He couldn’t do it without him.

Couldn’t do a lot of things without him.

But there was a difference. Antoine was Aziraphale, but he was  _ different _ from Aziraphale, and he treated Crowley differently. More and more, Antoine touched Crowley on the hand, or sat close beside him to show him something from a text, or laid his head on Crowley’s shoulder when he had read so much that he was exhausted. There was an unguardedness here. A trust.

“What if we took a different approach?” Antoine said, after poring through an especially unhelpful Latin grimoire.

“What different approach?”

“Cure your affliction. If you weren’t—considered tainted, or however you want to put it, you could peruse all the libraries of Heaven.” Antoine looked away. “It’s entirely unjust,” he added, in a lower voice, “that you should be considered tainted. For  _ battle scars.” _

Crowley’s heart lurched. “I can’t be cured,” he said, perhaps more harshly than necessary. “Don’t pursue that. We have to work on  _ you.” _

“I’ve reached an absolute dead end when it comes to myself, my dear. I think it’s time to try other avenues. Very well, if we can’t cure you, what about finding a way for me to contact an angel?”

“Humans summoning angels is impossible,” Crowley lied.

“So you can’t talk to them, and I can’t reach them. There has to be some way around that. Perhaps if you summoned, and I spoke . . .”

_ “No. _ Don’t. Please don’t, Zarafell. Just—concentrate on the cure. We still don’t understand what even  _ happened, _ maybe if we find some trace of that—“

But Antoine wasn’t Aziraphale. He was, but he wasn’t. Aziraphale was adept—absolutely miraculous, when it came to it—at taking things he wasn’t supposed to think of, and locking them away. Antoine, once he had a problem in his teeth, was unstoppable. And so Antoine unraveled it.

“I do know that you’re lying to me,” he said finally. “I don’t know the extent of it. But I am uncomfortable, continuing this research, when you haven’t told me the truth.”

“What do you mean, I haven’t told you the truth?”

“If there’s any worth to Heaven at all, they wouldn’t reject an angel for something they couldn’t control. You weren’t tainted by some battle long ago. You’re a Fallen angel.”

Crowley made an inarticulate sound.

“And I think I was, too. This, this human life of mine—I think perhaps it’s meant to be my redemption.” Antoine looked at Crowley, eyes brimming over with emotion. “It could be yours, too. You could find a way to join me. As a human. I know you care about me, Crowley. You care deeply. And that could lead you back to the light, do you understand? Yes, as humans, we will die—we might die a hundred more times, for all I know—but we could find each other, and live with each other, and become a little better each time we live—“

“What the  _ Heaven _ makes you think I want to be redeemed?” It came out as a near-shout.

“I do. I care about what’s right, Crowley. I hoped—I hoped that even if you wouldn’t do it for the sake of goodness, you might do it for the sake of me.”

“Well, it doesn’t work that way! You’re wrong, Zarafell. You  _ were _ an angel. Not Fallen, not damned—a full-fledged angel, doing good in the world for six thousand years. This isn’t some sort of lesson, or penance, or bloody plan from On High, it’s a  _ mistake.” _

“You didn’t tell me the truth before,” Antoine said. His expression wobbled, as if in grief, but his voice was calm. “How can I believe that you’re telling me the truth now?”

“I am! You  _ have _ to believe me! I admit it: I’m a demon. But you, you—“

Antoine shook his head. “There’s nothing glorious about me. Nothing bright or shining enough to be an angel. I’m sorry, Crowley, but I can’t trust you.”

“I—you can’t—“

“Good-bye, Anthony.”


	8. Date

Crowley had to do something very important before he went out with Ezra, and he didn’t like it. Hated it, in fact. Hated everything about it.

He felt, fairly strongly, that nobody was supposed to touch eyeballs. Especially their own eyeballs. Which meant that getting the brown contacts seated was a nightmare. He kept blinking them out again.

He didn’t have a choice, though. He didn’t want to mess with Ezra’s mind. He didn’t want to go there. And even if he  _ did, _ he wasn’t entirely sure that Ezra wouldn’t notice. Intelligent humans had noticed before, when they couldn’t remember what color someone’s eyes were.

So he fumbled the contacts in, and tried to blink until they felt comfortable, and then resigned himself to the fact that they probably wouldn’t be.

Driving to Ezra’s shop was only slightly more challenging than it normally would have been. Crowley generally drove by deciding that everything between him and his target was going to get out of his way, and then flooring it. It was a tactic that worked just as well when you were having eye trouble.

Out of the car, and into Ezra’s shop. Ezra, as usual, looked up from his book the instant the bell rang, and lit up with that unashamedly delighted expression. “Crowley!” He took in the fact that Crowley wasn’t wearing glasses, and followed up softly with,  _ “Oh.” _

“What is it?” Were the contacts not seated right? It felt as if they might not be seated right.

“Nothing.” Ezra sounded faintly confused. “Nothing, just not what I was—expecting, somehow. Never mind. Not important. I’ll lock up, shall I?”

He looked startled again when they got outside. “I know just enough about cars,” Ezra said carefully, “to guess that that’s not an ordinary one.”

“As cars go,” Crowley said, “she’s royalty. You like her?”

“She’s beautiful. She must cost a fortune to maintain, though. And insure.”

Crowley, who didn’t bother with maintenance or insurance, shrugged. “Worth it. What else would I do? Put her in a museum? It’d be a crime. She needs to be driven. Sell her? The only person who could buy her is some rich arsehole, and  _ I’m _ the only rich arsehole I want driving my car.”

He opened the door for Ezra, who got inside gingerly, and then went around and started the motor.

“Where are the,” Ezra started, and then grabbed for a handhold, hard, as Crowley accelerated.  _ “Seatbelts oh dear Lord don’t do that there are pedestrians—“ _

§

“Crowley, I am not dressed to have dinner at the Ritz.”

Crowley snorted. “You know what they assume when you show up underdressed for the Ritz? They assume that you’re the richest person in the room.”

“I don’t have enough money to split the bill at the Ritz.”

“Who said anything about splitting the bill? I’m paying.”

Ezra took a deep breath. “Crowley. What I’m trying to say is, I’m not comfortable with this.” He looked down at his hands. “I’m not always at my best when it comes to—reading signals. From people. I’m very much not at my best when it comes to reading signals from you. Normally, a dinner like this would set up certain expectations, but with you, I’m—I’m floundering. I don’t know what this  _ means, _ I don’t know what it means to you, but I am not at home in a place like that and until I get a clear idea of what it means to you—I’m not comfortable with it.”

Crowley drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, and then said, “Okay.” He put the Bentley into gear and pulled away from the curb, ignoring how Ezra tried to find something to grab onto.

Ezra was silent. Mostly silent. He made a squeak of dismay when Crowley shot between two jaywalkers, less than a foot from one of them. But otherwise he was quiet until Crowley pulled up beside an Italian restaurant.

“Haven’t actually been here,” Crowley said. “But the reviews are good.” He looked over at Ezra and saw the complex of expressions chasing each other across Ezra’s face. “You thought I was taking you back to the bookshop.”

“It seemed logical,” Ezra said, a little faintly. Crowley wasn’t sure whether the tone was because of emotion or because he didn’t like Crowley’s driving.

“I’m not angry. You’re not going to  _ make _ me angry. You say you’re uncomfortable with something, then we try something else. That’s all. The Ritz—all it means is that I know you love good food. And—the truth is, I don’t know that much about good food. Don’t bother with it, most of the time. So I chose the most obvious place.” Because he wanted to see Ezra smile. He wanted to hear the tiny, involuntary sounds Ezra made when he encountered something really delicious. He wanted to know that those, at least, hadn’t changed.

“Thank you,” Ezra said. “But—let’s eat here, this time.”

The Italian restaurant, at least, had excellent wine. Crowley ordered something called Seafood Fra Diavolo, mostly to see what was so diabolical about it. He wasn’t sure whether the diabolical part was supposed to be the spicing or the fact that it contained small octopuses. Octopi? Whatever you called them. Several cups into the wine, he said something about it, and Ezra maintained that they were octopodes, and anyhow he thought the things in the Seafood Fra Diavolo might be squid.

It gave Crowley a melancholy feeling to dine with someone who was supposed to be Aziraphale and not have him finish most of the food. You would think Crowley would have got used to that with the other human ones. Apparently not. It still hurt. But at least the conversation was good. They talked about books, as usual, but this time they talked about film, too. Crowley had to edge around the topic carefully so as not to admit, for instance, that the first horror film he’d ever seen was  _ Nosferatu, _ and he’d seen it when it was released.

Human, he reminded himself. Be human. For him.

Humans weren’t supposed to drive after the amount of wine Crowley had put away. “It  _ really _ doesn’t affect me that much,” Crowley told him. “I’m fine. Do I sound drunk? Do I look drunk?”

“I can’t exactly tell by your walk,” Ezra retorted, but he got in the car.

And then there was the movie.  _ Treasure Planet _ hadn’t been playing anywhere in London, of course, but that wasn’t an obstacle to Crowley. The theater wasn’t empty, which surprised him somewhat. Either the humans thought it was a new movie, or they didn’t care.

Crowley’s own enjoyment was tempered by the fact that the contact lenses were starting to honestly  _ hurt. _ They’d said something about not keeping them in for more than two hours at first, but he hadn’t paid attention. Had assumed that was just for humans. Probably not a good assumption to make.

It was bad enough that Ezra noticed it. “—fascinating modernization,” he was saying after the movie, “I can see where most of the plot points came from, and although you can’t exactly call it a  _ faithful _ recreation, it certainly was—dear, are you quite all right?”

Crowley told himself that his heart didn’t actually split in two when Ezra slipped up and called him  _ dear. _ “My eyes,” he managed. And then, giving it up as a bad job, he put his hand in his coat pocket, took out a pair of glasses that hadn’t been there before, and put them on his face, miracling the contacts away underneath them and hoping that Ezra didn’t notice.

“Ah.” Ezra looked as if he were thinking through things. “They are prescription, then.”

“Designer frames, prescription lenses.” The odds of Ezra seeing them in a catalogue were miniscule, but best to be safe.

“And you took them off to make me more comfortable.”

“I can do without them for a little while,” Crowley said.

“Don’t. I don’t want you to. I don’t want you hurting yourself for me.” Ezra stepped forward and put his hand on Crowley’s arm. “It doesn’t just go one way, you know. Making each other comfortable. And I would do anything to keep you from being in pain.”

Crowley shook his head. “You don’t want to say things like that.” As himself, Aziraphale would not have said something like that. As himself, Aziraphale would have understood that open-ended promises to a demon were a very bad idea.

“Yes,” Ezra said softly, “I rather think I do.”

“I’m not good for you.”

“No,” Ezra said, “sometimes you aren’t. Every time you walk out my door, I’m terrified that it will be the last time I see you. It hurts, and it frightens me, and I don’t know what I would do to make sure that you’ll walk into my shop again—and that frightens me more. I’ve made up my mind that I don’t  _ care _ if you’re good for me. What worries me more is—I’m not entirely sure I’m good for  _ you. _ It seems to hurt you, sometimes. Looking at me.”

“It does,” Crowley said hoarsely. “Like acid. It’s worth it.”

“Are you sure? If—if it causes you pain, to be with me—“

“It’s  _ worth _ it.”

“All right. But you must let me know the instant that changes.”

“It won’t change,” Crowley said. “I’m not the one who’s changed.”


	9. Knave of Hearts

Getting summoned was, in Crowley’s opinion, a celestial nuisance.

Well, it was more than that. It had its distinct dangers. There were ways Crowley could be compelled to do things, and some of those things were perilous or horrific. Mostly, though, the would-be magicians who summoned him wanted power or knowledge, and it was easy enough to define the terms the way Crowley wanted and leave them with their brain dribbling out their ears. The main thing was that it pulled him away from whatever he was doing at the time.

Crowley had hoped that as the world got more modern, magic among humans would slowly decline. But the nineteenth century, and the rise of spiritualism, seemed to bring a wave of new occultists, all of them very eager to have more arcane knowledge than their rival whatshisname, who was of course not a genuine seeker on the path but rather a garden variety fraud.

Which was why, when he was summoned on a thundery summer night in 1882, he wasn’t particularly surprised. Deeply annoyed, but not surprised. He just had time to figure out what kind of summoning it was—non-corporeal, it would just grab his mind, not his body—and choose to look well-dressed and suave before it dragged him sideways, out of bed.

Crowley appeared in a dark room, which was what he expected. There were more people around than he was used to, but they were all wearing dark robes, which was also expected.

There were exclamations as he appeared, mostly along the lines of,  _ holy mother of god it worked. _

Crowley tilted his head and waited. Silence sometimes intimidated these poseurs more than smoke and lightning.

“Demon serpens,” the one with the most ornate robe intoned, “you shall be bound into servitude. By the blood of the—“

“You realize,” Crowley said, “that lasts until you die.”

He seemed, as nearly as Crowley could tell beneath the hood, to be taken aback that Crowley responded to him. “By the blood—“

“Which doesn’t give me a lot of motivation to keep you alive.”

“Silence, fiend.” The leader made a slice across his palm, which struck Crowley as stupid. Arms hurt less, surely, and yielded more blood.

Crowley tried to continue the argument, and found that the summoning circle was built well enough that  _ silence, fiend _ had force. He closed his mouth again.

This was bad. Being bound to a human, that would only last for a few decades at the outside, but  _ while _ he was bound to the human, he couldn’t get anything done for Hell (or pretend that he’d got something done) which meant that Hell would become annoyed with him, and when Hell was annoyed with you, it was your problem. Your very, very painful problem. The bloody fourteenth century had been bad enough—

“Don’t.”

The voice came from the back of the room, but that wasn’t what made Crowley’s head snap around incredulously.

“Silence, Apprentice,” the leader said, somewhat absently. “Demon serpens, I conjure you—“

“It’s a living being,” the voice objected. And Crowley very much knew that voice.

A robed figure made its way through the rest of them, and then Crowley was certain. The way the figure was holding his hands, that was Aziraphale to the bone. Another human Aziraphale.

Mixed up with  _ this _ lot? That was dangerous.

“Failes, shut  _ up, _ will you?” the leader said, as if objections from this quarter were not uncommon, and never listened to.

“No real names during the ceremony,” another occultist objected.

“Be quiet, all of you! Listen, Failes, you’ll have the use of the demon too once I get done binding it to the service of the Order, so what’re you complaining about? You agreed to this too, remember? Coleman, don’t tell me how to do my job. All of you, come forth and give your blood to the—“

“I—yes, I went along with what you were saying, but that was mostly because I didn’t think you’d actually manage it!  _ This _ is not acceptable!” The Aziraphale human darted forward. The no-real-names human grabbed at him, got a handful of robe, and Crowley had a chance to see his face—younger than Aziraphale, still definitely him—before the Aziraphale human kicked at one of the candles surrounding the circle.

And Crowley’s mind snapped back to his body. Hard.

He stared at his ceiling. “Ow.”

Never mind the pain. The question was, were any of those occultists trying to hurt Aziraphale for ruining their fun?

Crowley grabbed his hat and plunged out into the streets of London, in the pouring rain.

§

Crowley didn’t find Aziraphale that night. Or the next.

In fact, it took a number of days. His main clue was that these magical orders were almost always upper-class nonsense, and the upper class acted in certain definable ways. Young men of that sort would have a club, perhaps several. That fact allowed him to track down various members of the Order of the Golden Lion (not to be confused with the Order of the Golden Hind or the Order of the Golden Dawn, because occultists were ridiculous) and put some fear into them on the subject of summonings in general and summoning “Demon Serpens” in particular. Crowley also asked where to find Failes.

Well, “asked.” Demanded and threatened a bit.

He found Failes the Thursday after the summoning. Eating alone at his club, doing something with a pack of cards while mostly ignoring his food—the food here had to be impressively bad, if Aziraphale wasn’t devoting full attention to it. But why cards?

Crowley moved closer.

Failes was muttering to himself. Crowley didn’t catch it all. Mostly,  _ knave of hearts, knave of hearts, oh bother, where are you? _

Card tricks, Crowley thought.

Well, far be it from him to resist a chance to make an entrance. He miracled the knave of hearts into his hand, sat down across from Failes, and slid it across the table. “Looking for this?”

Failes blinked at him in amazement and some delight. “How did you—“ And then his face did something complicated as he recognized Crowley.

“I owe you,” Crowley explained.

“Oh.” A little bit of fear there, but not as much as you would expect from a human. “Because—about the—I got banished from the Order for that.”

“Small loss,” Crowley said. “That lot are going to get themselves in trouble one of these days. I’m Crowley, by the way. Anthony Crowley, but the first is just to make me sound respectable as a human.”

“Zacharias Failes.” Zacharias reached across the table to shake Crowley’s hand.

§

This time, mindful of his past mistakes, Crowley told Zacharias everything.

Zacharias was amazed, and confused, but not appalled, which Crowley supposed was the best he could hope for. “A demon and an angel, though, how did you even  _ meet?” _ Which meant that Crowley had to explain the Garden of Eden, and Zacharias went somewhat white and excused himself until their next luncheon, and Crowley thought he had lost him for good.

Zacharias was back at the club the next day, though. “As I see it,” he said finally, “lounging about in a garden  _ sounds _ very nice, but without mankind going out into the world, we wouldn’t have Shakespeare. Or, or hot air balloons. Or any sort of scholarship, or entertainment. So the truth is, humanity owes you a great deal.”

Crowley shook his head uncomfortably. “No, humanity got there on its own. I just gave them a little push.”

Whether it was because of Crowley’s position as the Father of Knowledge—a title he objected to—or the prospect of himself as an angel, Zacharias threw himself into figuring out what had happened. Unlike Antoine, he didn’t need to learn it from scratch, either. He had a decent background in occultism from the Order of the Golden Lion. Zacharias even had ideas on how to make Crowley immune to most summonings, but Crowley told him to wait on that. He wasn’t sure how that sort of thing would interact with  _ Hell _ summoning him, and if Hell found out that it had been blocked, they would send someone unpleasant. Hastur and Ligur, most likely.

In the meantime, Crowley learned about Zacharias.

Zacharias loved magic. Not just real magic, but simulated magic, stage magic, which he studied under whatever mentor was willing to tolerate him. He had absolutely no talent for it, that was the thing, but he didn’t even seem to resent the fact. He dragged Crowley to several magic performances in the greater London area.

“I’m sorry,” Zacharias said, after having clapped and gasped through one of them while Crowley sat silently at his side. “This must all seem terribly gauche to you. Being used to real magic.”

“It’s not that.” Crowley struggled to put it into words. “I just don’t like being surprised. I’m used to—well, demons are fairly horrible to each other, when you come right down to it, and surprises can mean very bad things happening to me. I don’t like not knowing how a trick is done. And Maskelyne is good enough that I can’t figure it out.”

Zacharias was silent for a moment. “It isn’t right,” he said finally.

“What isn’t right?”

“That you should be condemned to the company of people who are horrible to each other.”

“I’m a demon too,” Crowley pointed out. “I’m as capable of being horrible as the next one.”

“Capable, yes, but you don’t usually  _ do _ it. And even if you do, you have enough free will to choose not to do it tomorrow. I have some rather pointed questions about the way the Almighty seems to have handled things.”

“Don’t,” Crowley said. “That never leads anywhere good.”

Zacharias didn’t stop asking. Something about being human, Crowley thought, made it impossible for him to put subjects aside and never touch them the way he used to.

“If my human existence is due to the angels destroying one of their own,” Zacharias said, sometime later, “it implies that angels are capable of murder.”

“Angels destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah,” Crowley pointed out. “You were  _ there. _ Well, I think you were there for Gomorrah. You’ve never been willing to talk much about it. Just gave me haunted looks when I brought it up, so I stopped.”

“That’s my point, though.” Zacharias gestured with his wine glass. “Angels aren’t agents of universal love and mercy. Demons don’t represent hatred. You, at least, seem to have a distinct—well, a fondness for me, if that isn’t being too presumptuous. Everything we’ve been told is wrong.”

Crowley couldn’t count the number of times that he had wished for Aziraphale to understand that the rules were arbitrary and the facts were made up. But this—this gave him an uncomfortable feeling, deep in his stomach, because Aziraphale didn’t think like that.

Being human was changing him.

Was that an inadvertent side effect, or was it  _ meant? _

“And where’s God in all this?” Zacharias went on. “Throwing half His angels into a pit. Standing aside while humans wage war. Sending plagues to Egypt rather than nipping down and having a quick chat with Pharaoh. Either God isn’t as all-powerful and all-knowing as we’ve always thought, or He isn’t entirely  _ good, _ and either way, I’m not sure worship is indicated. Certainly He hasn’t been fair to  _ you—“ _

_ “Stop!” _ Zacharias stumbled to a halt, wide-eyed. “Stop it,” Crowley repeated, in a lower voice. “There are some things you can’t  _ say. _ You’re a human. You might or might not have an immortal soul—I don’t understand what’s happening to you—but . . .”

He trailed off.

“What is it?” Zacharias said, after a long moment.

“The angels make you human,” Crowley said slowly. “Maybe it was on purpose, maybe it was by accident. But either way, they don’t want you back. They don’t want you in Heaven. Maybe that’s why you keep coming back. Because your soul can’t go to Heaven, so it gets—recycled, somehow.”

“That seems logical,” Zacharias allowed cautiously.

“What happens if you  _ don’t _ go to Heaven?”

“Presumably . . .” Zacharias said, and then pointed downward.

“That makes—too much sense.” Crowley threw himself to his feet and paced. “Send you back, repeatedly, and sooner or later they hope you’ll live an unrighteous life. This is Heaven’s way of condemning you to Hell. Not as a demon, where you would be an asset, but as a human soul.”

Zacharias swallowed. “What’s Hell like?”

“For humans? Like living on the East End. Everyone shoved together, not much in the way of law. Some really hard cases, many of them charging protection money—well, favors. One of the gangs is led by Genghis Khan. Mind you, there’s also music and art and poetry on every corner, because a lot of humanity’s best minds have ended up there. Like Beethoven—a lot of wrath, there.” Crowley turned sharply. “But you. You were an angel. I don’t know if it will be obvious or not, but if it is, you’re in danger. You don’t know what some of them want to do to angels— _ my _ fault, some of that, I submitted reports on the Spanish Inquisition after I got blamed for it, and Hell will happily adopt whatever humans invent—you can’t go. You  _ have _ to go to Heaven. Or back to Earth, anyway.”

“That may be difficult,” Zacharias said.

“Why?”

“I can’t simply un-think what I’ve thought about Heaven and Hell and God.”

Crowley closed his eyes. “Yes,” he said hopelessly, “you can.  _ I _ can. I can do that to you.”

Zacharias was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “Forgetting this research of ours is one thing, but I don’t want to do without the pleasure of your company. I—you have become very dear to me, Crowley. If this is friendship, what I share with you, then I’ve been getting by all my life on mere acquaintance-hood.”

Crowley swallowed. “I—I think I have to take it all. Back to the summoning. But I won’t leave you. Think of it as—as a new start. And it isn’t forever. Once you’re back to being an angel, we’ll both laugh about this.”

And he kept his promise. He ghosted around the club, he watched Zacharias, he saved him from a runaway horse one time.

But he didn’t let Zacharias see him again.


	10. Echoes and Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Note: this chapter does include violence. I have changed the rating because it does involve blood. Neither Ezra nor Crowley get hurt. I am going to try to include hyperlinks so that you can skip the violence if you wish. I'll put a very bare-bones summary of the sequence in the end note, so you can scroll down and look at that if you're not sure, or if you skipped the violence and need to know what happened for the sake of plot.

Ezra was desperately afraid that this new thing between them was going to break.

“‘M sorry,” Crowley muttered, coming into the shop the day after their movie date.

“Whatever for?”

“Making you think I was going to disappear on you. I’ve thought about it. Just—go to Norway, or America, or Australia, and never come back. Or come back when you’ve—forgotten about me. But I won’t. I wouldn’t. You have my word.”

“Thank you,” Ezra said.

“Ngh. Not a big deal. I’d give you my number and my address, but you already have it.”

There were times when things Ezra did seemed to spook Crowley. Like the time Crowley came into the shop to find Ezra messing around with a pack of cards. He looked startled, even alarmed. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing in particular,” Ezra said, and put away the cards.

The startled look didn’t go away.

“Someone sold me something impressive today. Found it in her grandfather’s attic, she said. She didn’t know she had a hundred-pound book until I looked it up for her.” Ezra picked up the volume— _ Maskelyne’s Book of Magic— _ from behind the counter, and waved it by way of illustration. “I may keep it. Heaven knows I can’t sell it here. People come in for a quick read, not a comparatively expensive treatise on a niche subject. But as I read through it, I . . .” He trailed off. What  _ had _ he been thinking about, when he took out the pack of bicycle cards?

“Maskelyne,” Crowley said, sounding funny.

“Yes. I don’t know anything about him, but—“ Ezra stopped. “You  _ do _ know something about him.”

“He was like a rock star, in his day. A lot of them were. The big-name magicians.”

“Like Houdini?”

Crowley wiggled his hand from side to side. “Sort of. Houdini had a different specialty.”

“I didn’t realize you were interested in magicians,” Ezra said.

Crowley sprawled into his usual chair. “I’m not. Can’t stand ‘em. Didn’t even watch  _ The Prestige.” _

“Oh.” Ezra put the cards away carefully. He thought Crowley watched the motion, with that odd, predator-sharp focus he sometimes seemed to have. It was difficult to tell. Crowley was usually good about tilting and turning his head to make it obvious what he was looking at, but he didn’t  _ have _ to. “I’m familiar with the book. I didn’t realize there was a film."

“Did you like it?” Crowley asked. “The book.”

“Well, it’s a bit grim, you know. And also—“ Ezra hesitated. “It gave me bad dreams. At least, I think it was the book that gave me bad dreams.”

There was no real pattern to what gave Ezra bad dreams. And the truth was, these dreams hadn’t been particularly  _ nightmarish, _ as such; just heartbreakingly melancholy, dreams of seeing someone out of the corner of his eye and turning to greet them in joy and realizing that there was nobody there.

§

Ezra carefully didn’t ask Crowley things. What he did for a living, that was a big one. Crowley had denied that he was in the mob, and Ezra believed him, but—he was sometimes uncertain whether he  _ trusted _ the fact that he believed him. Crowley was clearly excruciatingly rich, and he spent most of his time at leisure, but once, in April, he had explained that he had to be out of town “because of work.” Ezra had tried asking a very neutral question about how his trip went, and got an oblique answer about, “Don’t buy a bloody iPhone, they’re going to be more of a nuisance than they’re worth.”

“I barely know what they are,” Ezra had admitted. “New sort of mobile?”

Crowley grimaced. “New thing, yeah, and I’ve  _ got _ to keep the Powers That Be in new things. Otherwise they start getting ideas about old things like thumbscrews. Joke,” he added hastily, as if Ezra was still young and was still struggling with questions of what people said versus what they actually meant.

So Crowley had a job. And it might involve insider information on complicated tech like iPhones.

Ezra didn’t pry.

In April, Crowley brought up going to the Ritz again. Ezra demurred. There were so many good restaurants in London, he said, and perhaps he should try picking this time. Crowley let him.

Their dinners together were—they weren’t  _ not _ dates. But Ezra wasn’t about to try a kiss when Crowley didn’t seem receptive.

If Ezra wasn’t mistaken, Crowley seemed to be gradually relaxing around him. Sometimes, there were things that brought back the pain and wariness, that made him vibrate like a plucked string, but they seemed to be fewer and further between.

Ezra had to flatly refuse to get in the Bentley until Crowley agreed not to drive like that. He seemed perplexed by Ezra’s insistence that it wasn’t safe, saying that he had a perfect driving record and look at the sort of condition the Bentley was in, did that say  _ dangerous driver? _ Ezra had pointed out, quite reasonably, that the Bentley’s excellent condition said more about the drivers who’d had it before Crowley, and Crowley looked away, seemingly acknowledging the point. “I don’t think,” Ezra said, pressing his advantage, “you understand how  _ terrifying _ your driving is. I don’t think you’re actually trying to terrify me. But—“

“Never,” Crowley promised. “Never again. Look, get in. I’ll—I’ll go slow, all right?”

He kept his promise.

Some days, he seemed to be agitated and it had nothing to do with Ezra, but Ezra couldn’t make him talk about it. “Just things from work,” he said once.

“Things from work?”

“Eric—sort of general gofer type—says that there are rumors that—never mind. Not important. I just don’t know how much  _ time _ there is, that’s all.”

And he refused to be drawn on what he meant.

Reading the Maskelyne book gave Ezra lonely dreams again, and he didn’t know why.

§

It was July, and it was one of those incongruously hot days that made a person wish that this were the States and everyone had an air conditioning unit. Ezra made do with a large blue fan. Crowley had said that he would be by this evening. The wait made the day seem especially long. The unpleasant individual who came in trying to sell Ezra Jeffrey Archer books didn’t help matters. There were things that Ezra flatly refused to stock.

He looked up hopefully when the bell rang, only to see two unfamiliar men in leather jackets. Ezra wouldn’t have blinked at the appearance of  _ one _ leather jacket, but something about two of them set an alarm ringing faintly in his head, and he straightened. “Can I help you?”

“Yeah, probably,” the one in the lead said. “We want to buy a book.”

“You’ve come to the right place,” Ezra said, coming out from behind the counter. “Did you have a particular book in—“

The leader lunged towards him and grabbed him by the collar. “Actually, scratch that. We’ll just take everything in your cash register.”

Leather jackets were good at blocking knife slashes. That’s what the alarm bell was trying to tell him.

The much louder alarm bell was noting that the leader had a knife. “All right,” Ezra stuttered, “all right, now let’s not do anything hasty—“

“I said  _ all _ of it, you fat simpering bastard!”

“I wasn’t objecting to the terms!” His voice went very high as he said it. “But, but surely you understand that you’ll have to, to let me go in order to  _ open _ the—“ The follower had picked up the cash register. “Please don’t  _ break _ that, you can have everything in it but don’t  _ break  _ it, you have no idea what they cost to—“

He hadn’t heard the bell ring again. Hadn’t heard anyone come in.[skip]

Had no explanation for the fact that Crowley was suddenly  _ there, _ seizing the follower by the back of his collar and slamming him into the counter so hard that Ezra heard a  _ crack _ on top of the thump. The leader let go of Ezra, saying a word that Ezra had never said, and then was seemingly stopped in his tracks by a furious glare from Crowley.  _ “Watch,” _ Crowley said, and hammered the underling’s head into the counter again, ignoring the blood gushing from the man’s nose. “You.” Slam. “Just.” Slam. “Stand there.” Slam. “And  _ watch. _ Because when I’m done with him—“

[end skip] _“Crowley!”_ Ezra shouted.

Crowley whipped around.

“Oh,  _ shit,” _ the leader said, very softly.

“He’s incapacitated,” Ezra said, forcing his voice to steadiness and not doing a very good job of it. “He’s barely conscious. You can let him go. There’s no need to go any further.”

Crowley hesitated for a long moment, and then propped the follower up and shoved him at the leader. The follower didn’t cross the distance so much as collapse across it, and the leader caught him. “I’m really very sorry, sir,” the leader gulped out. “I wouldn’t have—“

“Start a new life. Somewhere else. Far away, like Australia.”

“Yes, sir. Absolutely. Thank you, sir—“ Half supporting the follower, half dragging him, the lead robber went out the door and was gone.

Ezra sagged against the nearest bookshelf.

“I’ll,” Crowley said, hoarsely, “I’ll just—“ He turned towards the door.

_ “Don’t you dare.” _ It came out vehement and desperate. “I’ll lock the door,” Ezra made for it, “and—and would you rather I didn’t call the police?”

The answer was very slow in coming. “Not while I’m here.”

“All right.”

“I can leave.”

_ “Don’t.” _

“I nearly killed him.”

“Under the circumstances,” Ezra said, “I think the overreaction was understandable. I’ll get us some—Crowley?“

Crowley was shaking.

Crowley was clinging to the counter, heedless of the blood he had left there, and he was shaking, and when Ezra came around to face him, there were tears seeping out from underneath the dark glasses.

Asking  _ are you all right _ was clearly redundant. He wasn’t. Ezra pulled a tissue from the box on his desk. “Let me,” he started, and reached for Crowley’s glasses.

_ “No!” _ Crowley stepped back, putting a protective hand to the glasses earpieces. “My eyes,” he gulped out.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think. I suppose it isn’t dark enough yet.”

“No. No, not—dark enough.”

“All right. Then—“

“I can’t do this.” It came out as a whisper. “I can’t do this,  _ I can’t do this again, _ I can’t do this, I can’t do this—“

What Ezra wanted to do was to embrace Crowley. Hug him. Assure him it would never happen again. Tell him that everything was fine.

But if he sent Crowley running, now—that would be cruelty itself, to bring up Crowley’s old pain when he was dealing with a new crisis. “I’ll make us some tea,” Ezra said helplessly.

He half-expected Crowley to be gone when he was done turning the electric kettle on.  _ I can’t do this again. _

The person Crowley had lost—they hadn’t just died. They’d been killed.

But Crowley was still in the bookshop when Ezra re-emerged. He was drawing all the blinds. “Come on back,” Ezra said gently, and Crowley nodded jerkily.

Crowley waited until Ezra was in his usual armchair. “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be,” Ezra said. “You may have saved my life.”

“I guess—I guess I owe you an explanation—“

“No.”

“What?”

“No. You don’t owe me anything you don’t want to give. And I know you don’t want to explain why that man knew your name.”

“I’m not in the mob,” Crowley said.

“I believe you.”

“I just—haven’t told most of London’s underworld that. They think—well, they think my father, actually, which is not really—it’s complicated.”

“I believe you,” Ezra repeated, “and you don’t have to tell me.”

It wasn’t until later that Ezra realized that all the blood was gone from his counter, as if it had never been.

§

“You look awful.”

Ezra looked up. He hadn’t heard Crowley come in, which was alarming, since the bell still worked perfectly well. It implied he’d been asleep on his feet. Well, asleep at his counter, anyway.

“Haven’t been sleeping well,” Ezra admitted.

“Yeah. Yeah, I guess that would—“ He trailed off.

“Actually, I’m not sure it has anything to do with the—“ Ezra hesitated. “The incident. I’m not dreaming about  _ that.” _

Crowley perched on Ezra’s counter, and Ezra didn’t have the heart to tell him it wasn’t for sitting on. “What are you dreaming about?”

Ezra thought about it. “Churches,” he admitted. “It makes no sense.”

He didn’t expect Crowley to go rigid.  _ “Churches?” _

“It’s odd. Sometimes I’m right outside one. Running for shelter. Sometimes I’m inside one, and there’s someone—someone I know I have to protect, and I don’t understand why. It’s always night. I suppose it’s difficult to have a good nightmare without darkness.” Ezra locked the cash register, pocketed the key, and begun the process of closing up. “These last few nights, I’ve woken up from those dreams again and again. It’s starting to be an infernal nuisance, honestly.”

Crowley looked somewhat stricken. “Do you ever dream about—other things?”

“My dear, I’m sure I dream about all sorts of things. You’ll have to be more specific.”

“Dreams that—recur, I guess. Dreams that you remember. Odd dreams.”

“I used to dream about a comet, when I was back at university. I used to think that was somehow significant. It wasn’t. Too much fantasy literature, I suspect.”

“Being locked up?” Crowley suggested, sounding a little strangled.

“I think everyone has dreams where they can’t escape from something. Why does it matter, Crowley? I had a bit of a fright, and my mind is coming up with odd metaphors. That’s what subconscious minds  _ do. _ It isn’t anything important.”

Crowley hesitated, and then said, in a rush, “Do you ever dream about a garden?”

Ezra shrugged. “I’m not sure it’s the sort of thing I’d remember, if I did. There are lots of gardens.”

“Not like this one.”

“What’s this about, Crowley?”

“Something—something left over—I have to go. I’m sorry.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bare-bones summary of the violence in this chapter: Crowley attacks one of the robbers, slamming him repeatedly into Ezra's desk. Ezra stops him before he kills the attacker, assuring Crowley that he is safe and there's no need to go any further.


	11. Death and Dreams

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is an onscreen, nongraphic temporary character death in this chapter. I will put an html jump in the text so that people can navigate past it if they need to, and an end-note with a summary of what happens.

Crowley, if anyone asked,  _ absolutely wasn’t _ working with British Intelligence in any way. He was a criminal, or that was his human cover story. The fact that he was a criminal who inadvertently created the odd windfall for British Intelligence—that was a side issue.

If Hell had commented, which they hadn’t, Crowley would have told them that the longer he could stretch World War II out, the worse conditions would become in the world, which generally led to sin. The truth was, Nazis had got on his List of Things Crowley Dislikes, ranking somewhere above horses, even.

If he was right, he was going to have a hard time passing this one off as criminal enterprise. There was a bookseller trying to double-cross Nazis. He was in for a nasty surprise. And Crowley thought he knew who might try something like that. Especially since the bookseller’s name was Feldman, and Crowley had come to be wary of that sort of coincidence.

The bookseller had set the meeting in a church. Why did it have to be a church?

Crowley did not make an impressive entrance. Rather a ridiculous one. In his defense, it bloody  _ hurt. _

One of the Germans was babbling about how his fame preceded him, all that nonsense, what a pity you have to die etcetera etcetera, shut  _ up _ already. And Mr. Feldman—who was, indeed, another Aziraphale human—said, “I’m sorry, who are you meant to be?”

“Your very best friend,” Crowley said, “at the moment. Come over here, would you?”

“I’m not sure why I should do anything of the sort.”

“In a moment,” Crowley said, “a bomb is going to fall on this building.” One of the Nazi idiots opened their mouth. “Yes, I know, they’re all falling on the East End tonight. It’d take a miracle. If you run away very,  _ very _ fast, you might survive. You wouldn’t enjoy dying. You definitely wouldn’t enjoy what comes after.” These were exactly the sort of two-bit fanatics that would be shivved in a back alley of Hell by someone more practical than they were, and Hell being Hell, they couldn’t get out of it by conveniently dying. “Meanwhile, you and I, Feldman, are going to have to be standing very close together indeed, because if I’m going to get us out of this, I’m going to have to get us out of  _ here. _ And that’s a bit tricky.”

“Kill him,” the lead German said. “He is very irritating.”

Several things happened at once. Crowley pointed upwards, hoping that the Germans would look upwards and buy him a few more seconds.

The Nazi woman turned her gun towards Crowley.

Feldman jumped at the Nazi woman, yelling something incoherent about  _ watch out!_[skip]

And the Nazi henchman swung towards Feldman, and unloaded.

Crowley howled, grabbed Feldman, and transported them away. He thought almost that he could feel the heat of the explosion behind him, and he regretted it deeply, because it meant that he wouldn’t have a chance to  _ get _ the Nazi bastards—hunt them down, hunt them slowly, show them what a demon could really do—but that was irrelevent, that was a stupid diversion, because Feldman—

“I know you,” Feldman gasped out. “Don’t I.”

And then he died.

§

[end skip]Crowley ransacked Feldman’s bookshop.

He wasn’t sure exactly why. It wasn’t going to make him feel any better. Make him feel worse, more likely, touching things that belonged to a person he would never get to know, even if he met him again in another life. But he went through, and stole everything he thought Aziraphale might want again. Books of prophecy—a pity Crowley hadn’t thought to save the ones that were bait for the Nazis. Old classics, like Shakespeare and the Iliad and the Odyssey, along with one of Crowley’s personal favorites,  _ Beowulf— _ he remembered hearing that one for the first time in a dark, smoky hall, told like a proper monster story.

He hesitated a little over one volume:  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel. _ He wasn’t sure what that was doing in Feldman’s personal collection. And this space behind the counter  _ was _ Feldman’s personal collection, he was sure of it. These books were not meant to be sold.

It wasn’t until he took it home and read it, fighting the tendency of his eyes to get disobedient with small print, that he thought he understood. Nobles freed from the Bastille. The French revolution, and extended misunderstandings, and cunning rescues.

Was it possible that Aziraphale retained things from life to life?

And if he did, was it possible that he might be able to remember his life as an angel? Enough, anyway, for him to tell Crowley what had happened, give him some sort of hint, some sort of handle on how to fix things?

Crowley didn’t know.

But he read  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel _ cover to cover, again and again.

§

Crowley actively went looking for Alex Felice, who was the next Aziraphale. It was still mostly coincidence that he found him, in San Francisco. On the run from a hostile family, a familiar feature of gay clubs and bars. He wore his hair longer this time, and sometimes wore lacy white dresses despite the danger.

Out of character for Aziraphale, Crowley thought, disturbed. Granted, gender was altogether a more changeable concept for either of them than it was for most humans, but Aziraphale-that-was had rarely changed nonetheless. And clubs? Dancing?

It wasn’t a problem for Crowley to insert himself into Alex’s social circle, though. Snakes slither in.

It also wasn’t a problem for him to bring up past lives and past life regression. Alex was fascinated by that sort of thing. He had, like many young men in nineteen sixty-nine, a conviction that the Establishment had lied to him about absolutely everything, including things that they had no real motive to lie about. Crowley talked about the Man and tried to hide his discomfort. Aziraphale didn’t do this. Aziraphale didn’t question authority like this.

Crowley tried to ignore the small voice that whispered,  _ experimenting on your friend. How is this different from Adelard? _ He wasn’t going to do that again, he wasn’t going to  _ scare _ him, he was just going to  _ see _ if the memories were there.

So Crowley talked Alex into a past life regression and went digging around in Alex’s head.

The first time, Crowley thought, Alex just came up with what he thought he was supposed to come up with. A priest in ancient Egypt. But the next time, Alex woke up in the middle of the trance—Crowley didn’t force him to stay under, he didn’t want to do that to Aziraphale—and said, with great excitement, “I think I died in the French Revolution!”

The look on Crowley’s face must have been memorable, because Alex laughed and shook his head. “Sorry. I realize that’s a silly thing to be excited about. But I had a very clear image, I was  _ there, _ and I knew it was the Bastille.”

Somehow, hearing Aziraphale speak with an American accent was always more jarring than hearing him speak French or German. “Anything else?” Crowley said. “What you were wearing? Anyone who was with you?”

“Nice clothes, I suppose?” Alex didn’t sound entirely certain. “What was in fashion back then, for the nobility? I suppose I must have been nobility.”

“Mm. Not necessarily. After the French Revolution got rid of all the obvious parasites, it moved on to people who were suspected of disloyalty. There was a big thing about being willing to fight for France.”

“Is that why you don’t want a revolution?”

“They go wrong,” Crowley said. “Revolutions. You follow a charismatic leader, you do your best to  _ impress _ him, and then you find out that he’s not who you thought he was, or else he changed on the way—“ The way down.

He wouldn’t even say that to Aziraphale. Why was he saying it to Alex?

Their next session, Alex returned to the idea of Egypt. “Do you think they had magic in ancient Egypt?” he asked Crowley. “Real magic, I mean?”

“People have  _ tried _ magic in most places,” Crowley said. “I mean, just look at the Romans. Curses were an actual cottage industry. What makes you think of magic?”

“Well, when I was under, I had the distinct impression of walking through a field. Mud all over my feet. And there were little green plants sprouting in my footsteps. I have no idea if that was a metaphor, or some sort of ceremony I did as a priest that was just  _ supposed _ to make the plants grow, or . . .” He trailed off.

Or it was an actual memory of Aziraphale blessing the fields, Crowley thought. Forestalling Famine. Maybe he should have paid more attention to Alex’s ramblings about Egyptian priesthood. He had forgotten that all this would be filtered through Alex’s human perceptions.

Alex came back the next week with a stack of books. Nothing could keep an Aziraphale away from books. “The Egyptians  _ were _ a tremendously wise civilization. They lasted for centuries—millennia—while we’re burning ourselves out in a sort of capitalist paroxysm. And when you look back at magick traditions—“ Crowley could clearly hear the K of Pretentiousness at the end of the word. “A lot of them take from the Egyptians.”

“That’s partly because the nineteenth century was  _ obsessed,” _ Crowley pointed out. “And it wasn’t out of respect, either.”

Perhaps it was because Alex was thinking of magic-with-a-k, but that session he dredged up an image of a ceremony with dark robes. Alex decided it was medieval.

Crowley thought about that for a while. He had  _ blocked _ that memory. Zacharias had died not knowing about it. But now it was back.

The next time, he tried something a little different. Putting Alex under—there was always a bit of a rigamarole to that, because humans didn’t expect someone to just click their fingers and  _ do _ it—and then, unlike before, he asked a leading question. “Do you remember the Garden?”

Alex was silent for a long time. Then, voice slurred, he said, “I gave it away.”

Crowley’s heart leapt. “Gave what away?”

“Don’t know.” A long, long pause. “I was telling somebody. Somebody important.”

Crowley’s prodding failed to elicit anything else. When awoken, Alex only said that he had worn long white robes, and looked faintly disturbed. Crowley didn’t press.

The next session, though, Alex came in more disturbed. “I’ve been having dreams,” he announced, unprompted.

“Dreams?”

“Stemming from this, I think. What we’re doing here. Some of them are—horrible, some of them are wonderful, but there’s always someone there.” Alex swallowed. “Someone—incredibly dear to me. Someone beloved. Like—like a soulmate, if that isn’t too ridiculous a concept. Sometimes they’re male, sometimes they’re female, sometimes I’m not sure, but they reincarnate down the ages just like I do, and they’re always there, but we’re always—kept apart. There are moments when my hand is resting just a space away from his, and I want so badly to reach over and take it, it feels like it could tear me apart how much I want to take it, but—I can’t. I know, in the dream, that I absolutely can’t.”

“That’s not real,” Crowley said unsteadily.

“That’s not the bizarre thing. The bizarre thing is—their eyes. They’re not—they don’t look like—“ Alex swallowed again. “And if we’re going to continue this, I need you to take off your glasses. Just for a moment. I need to  _ know.” _

“I have an eye condition,” Crowley said.

“It’s dark in here. Just the lava lamp.”

“No! Az—Alex, this isn’t—this isn’t  _ you. _ _ You _ didn’t feel that way. This is some  _ me _ leaking into your head. I shouldn’t—I never should have—you should go. Forget all about this. Past lives, it was a stupid thing anyway.”

“I know what I felt,” Alex said stubbornly.

“Yes, and I put it into your head! During the hypnosis sessions. I  _ programmed _ you, Alex. I knew you weren’t straight, I liked the looks of you, and I took advantage of you. The entire past lives thing was a scam to get into your pants. I’ve been lying to you from the beginning.”

Alex froze. Then he said, “And why tell me now?”

“Change of heart? Even I draw the line somewhere? Don’t question it. Just go.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“I said get out of my flat.”

Crowley went back to London and started rumors of a criminal empire to distract himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A summary of the situation earlier in the fic: WWII Aziraphale (Alan Feldman) is killed by the Nazis.


	12. Returning

Ezra took three days, once again, to call Crowley. He realized, with a leaden feeling in his stomach, that it was probably over. Crowley’s lost love hadn’t just died, they had been killed. The incident with the robbers had brought it all back. He would have to be stupid to think Crowley would stick around with all that crowding in his head.

Finally, though, the need to  _ know _ got the better of him. He dialed, and waited.

“Nghlrrello?”

“Did I wake you?” At seven at night? That implied that Crowley had slept the whole day through. That wasn’t good, was it. “I’m sorry, I can call another time—“

“No, I’m awake!” That sounded much clearer. “I’m awake. What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t heard from you in three days,” Ezra said carefully, wishing he could see Crowley’s face. “I wanted to—clarify. You said once that you wouldn’t leave, and while I don’t intend to hold you to that, I wanted some indication as to whether we’re still—“

“Together,” Crowley said flatly.

“Well. Yes.”

“We’re  _ not _ together. You never would—if you were thinking straight, you never would want to get together with me. This is just—an Arrangement.” There was a noise on the other end of the line, as if Crowley were moving as he talked. “Never should have let it get as far as it has.”

An arrangement. That was cold. A mad impulse rose in Ezra to say,  _ you know, most people, when they enter an arrangement for a convenience fuck, actually get to the fucking part. _ But Ezra didn’t curse, and Ezra didn’t want to drive Crowley away. “As far as what has?” he said instead. “We talk, we go to dinner, we go to the occasional movie. You try to make me listen to modern music. That’s not  _ going far, _ that’s just—friendship.”

He didn’t think he was imagining the relieved sigh at the other end of the line. “Good,” Crowley said. “Good. So long as we both understand that.”

“I don’t mind if you take some time,” Ezra said, “to—to process what happened last week. But I do want some sort of indication of whether you want to talk to me again.”

“Of course I want to—why wouldn’t I—“ Crowley cut himself off. “Why would you want to talk to  _ me?” _

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“I lost my temper.”

“Under extreme provocation, yes.”

“Doesn’t that make you hesitate? Just a little?”

Ezra cradled the phone on his shoulder. “You’re asking whether I’m afraid of you.” He shook his head, forgetting for a moment that Crowley couldn’t see it. The truth was, he had a powerful reaction to the idea of someone who cared enough to rescue him, and it wasn’t fear. And he was going to keep it to himself, because—arrangement. “I’m not. I never will be.”

Crowley snorted. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“All right, I’m not afraid of you  _ now, _ and I don’t imagine I’ll be afraid of you for the foreseeable future. Does this mean you’ll come round to the bookshop?”

“I’ll come round to the bookshop,” Crowley said.

§

“I don’t know how you keep managing to find theaters that are showing old films,” Ezra said. “That was utterly ridiculous. I have no idea why I like it so much.”

“That’s  _ The Mummy _ for you,” Crowley said fondly.

Every now and then, Ezra surprised that look on Crowley’s face. Fond. As if he would go to the ends of the Earth to make Ezra smile. Pulling up in the Bentley with some sort of ends-of-the-earth souvenir,  _ oh, don’t make a big deal out of this, it’s just a thing, _ but proud of himself anyway, with the cocky air he had when he was really comfortable.

Ezra’s heart always fluttered a little when he saw that look.

The money aspect of the relationship still bothered Ezra sometimes. He had recently invited Crowley to his flat, warning that it wasn’t much. Crowley had looked around at the shelving, which Ezra had constructed himself out of raw boards and glass bricks, and smiled as if it was what he had expected. Then he had produced a wine bottle and split the wine with Ezra.

Ezra hadn’t tasted wine like that before, and said so. Crowley was surprised. “Really? You used to—“ He cut himself off.

“Used to what?” Ezra asked, confused.

“Well, you went to university. Didn’t you go out drinking then?”

“I didn’t drink  _ anything _ as good as this,” Ezra said, with some feeling. “Besides, I didn’t have much of a social life at university. I had the university library, and that was enough.”

“What did you study?” Crowley was lounging on Ezra’s old sofa as if it were made for lounging.

“English literature, what else? It turns out there’s not much you can do with that besides becoming an English literature professor, though, and—well, my father cut me off before I had a chance to pursue my Ph.D. He was exceedingly upset with me, being shortsighted enough to pursue something like literature rather than engineering. So I worked various jobs for a while, and then I used my inheritance to set up the bookshop.” Ezra took a sip of wine. This stuff was meant to be savored, definitely. “I was somewhat surprised to get anything, to tell you the truth.”

“Was a father before, too,” Crowley said softly. Ezra thought he was talking to himself.

“Before?”

Crowley froze for an instant. Then he said, “I knew someone. Once. His father put him in a military academy; he ran away and became a pacifist. It was—when you think about it, that sort of thing is brave. Braver than staying. But I always did wonder  _ why.  _ Why would someone who follows the rules, who believes in duty more than he believes in happiness—why would he have that one moment when he just says  _ no? _ What prompts that? If circumstances were different, would he do it again? It’s just—something I think about, sometimes.”

Ezra thought about it. “There are many different kinds of duty,” he said.

“What do you mean?”

“Well, if this man believed that his duty was to his father, then the obvious thing to do would be to stay in the academy. Same with duty to his country. But that’s not where his duty lies at all, is it? There’s a duty to one’s fellow humans. A duty to humanity as a whole. A duty to decency, not to be a person who kills other, blameless people because of oil. Although, I suppose this may have been before that.”

“There barely was a time before that,” Crowley said. “Before it was oil, it was spices, slaves, you name it. History is mostly a procession of  _ I want _ followed by  _ who can I hurt to get it.” _

“You have a remarkably cynical view of the human condition,” Ezra said.

“But you don’t, do you? Humanity is good at heart. Humans help other humans through the most horrible of disasters. Even the worst humans will sometimes stop and spare a life they could have extinguished, and that proves it to you, doesn’t it? That there’s good everywhere.” He smiled, a bit sadly.  _ “That _ stays the same, anyway.”

“I suppose that is a remarkably good summation of my views,” Ezra admitted. He wondered how Crowley had known.

Ezra didn’t find out what the wine had been worth until later, and it made him supremely uncomfortable. If he had known he had been drinking  _ that _ many pounds—well, he would have drunk it anyway, just to see what it was like, but still. This thing that Crowley did, this thing where he bought Ezra something extravagant just because he thought Ezra would like it—

“You need to let people do nice things for you,” Crowley told him the second time he brought wine over.

“I have trouble,” Ezra said, “taking things I haven’t earned.”

“You don’t have to earn it. That’s the whole point. You don’t  _ earn _ a gift. You don’t have to do anything to deserve a gift.”

There were times when Ezra felt like he was living in a slightly altered reality. It seemed, sometimes, that every time Crowley thought of a movie that Ezra might like, it was playing somewhere in London. Or that the rain stopped when they walked outside, and started again the moment they had a roof over their head. Or—he couldn’t actually remember Crowley encountering a red light, whatever speed he drove at.

Perhaps it was a symptom of being in love. Because Crowley might just have “an arrangement,” but Ezra—Ezra loved him. Extravagantly, bewilderedly, hopelessly.


	13. Revelation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is now _art of this chapter!_ AraniaArt has done an absolutely beautiful piece of art based on images in this chapter, which I am (hopefully, assuming I get the html right) embedding in the fic. Can't say much more about it without spoiling it, but guys, _guys,_ it is _fantastic!_

Crowley hadn’t arrived for their date.

Crowley never stood Ezra up. Not for something he actually scheduled. Ezra waited, and then tried calling his mobile number, only to find out that the entire mobile network was scrambled somehow. Calling his home number just yielded his answering machine.

Crowley had said he had something to do today, something to do with work.  _ It should be easy, I’ve already got it all set up, _ he’d told Ezra,  _ but I know I can’t get free before six. _

As the hours crawled on, Ezra’s guesses started to move away from  _ perhaps he couldn’t get free because of the mobile network, somehow,  _ and moved more towards,  _ perhaps he’s dead in a car accident, you know how he drives when you’re not in the car. _

He called Crowley’s home number again. No answer.

By ten thirty, when he hadn’t heard  _ anything, _ Ezra had reached an emotional state that he wasn’t going to call  _ frantic _ only because he didn’t want to admit to frantic. He would, Ezra decided, go to Crowley’s flat. He knew where it was. Crowley’s address was in the phone book. And if Crowley got angry, well, really, he was the one on the hook for missing their—meeting. With Crowley, he couldn’t call it a date, not to Crowley’s face.

Ezra went to Crowley’s flat.

Crowley’s flat was in an enormous building in Mayfair. The rent must have been astronomical. Ezra felt intimidated by the place even as he went inside. He was somewhat surprised that he didn’t have to be buzzed in. Perhaps Crowley had deliberately picked a place where he didn’t have to deal with that sort of thing.

Up the elevator.

Ezra expected to ring the doorbell and find Crowley not at home, or at least not answering. Instead, the door to Crowley’s flat was half-open.

Perhaps, Ezra thought, Crowley had just entered in a hurry. That still implied there might be something wrong.

If someone had broken in, Ezra was more likely to be a hindrance than a help. Crowley, regardless of the whole  _ not in the mob _ thing, knew how to hurt someone. Ezra had never been in a fight—well, strictly speaking, he had never fought back. If someone had broken in, they might well be hardened criminals. People who thought—whatever they thought, about whether Crowley was a criminal and something about his father and Ezra really didn’t have enough information, did he? The point was, this could be dangerous. He should go. Or call the police.

He pushed the door the rest of the way open and stepped inside.

The inside.

Ezra’s first impression was,  _ this isn’t a flat, it’s a labyrinth. _ With full literary emphasis on the sort of things that lurked at the center of labyrinths, and what usually happened to unwary people who wandered in. There were too many corridors. He fought the irrational but very persistent idea that they would rearrange themselves behind him to keep him from getting back out.

The impression of a labyrinth was so strong that Ezra was surprised that in a moment, he came out in an actual room. There was a television, and a desk with a throne of sorts, and—it wasn’t a living room, it didn’t make any sense as a part of a habitation, but it was at least a place to orient himself by.

There was a bookshelf on the back wall. Or rather, a book case, with a glass front. Everything in it looked old, if perfectly preserved, and Ezra wondered where Crowley kept the books that he got from the bookshop. These clearly weren’t anything he actually  _ read _ . The book case had the feel of a shrine or a mausoleum. 

There was another room right next to this one. There was a broken shard of something in the doorway.

It was the first thing Ezra had seen in the labyrinth that wasn’t completely pristine. He moved towards it.

It was part of a pot. A plant pot, from the look of the dark soil spilled over it. Ezra picked it up, realizing as he did so that he might be compromising a crime scene, and looked into the room.

There were more broken plant pots in here. Shards of plant pots, spills of potting soil, and plants lying amid the destruction. It looked as if someone had smashed a small nursery of indoor plants and exotics. That wasn’t what caught Ezra’s attention.

There was something in the corner of the room. Something large.

In the dimness, it took Ezra an instant to sort the shape into  _ living thing. _ It certainly wasn’t a living thing he was familiar with. Heavy, sleek coils that looked like a giant black snake.  _ Huge _ black wings—was it one creature, or two? A torso—

He had only a second to take it in. The creature grabbed an almost-whole pot, which was the moment that Ezra realized it had scaled, clawed  _ hands, _ and hurled it directly at him. Lightning-fast, straight at his head. He didn’t have a chance to dodge.

Didn’t need to, because in the next eyeblink, the pot stopped dead in the air, only a foot from his face.

Ezra stepped carefully to the side and looked at the creature. Really looked. The creature was propped on one hand now, and his face was at least partly humanoid despite the scales, and  _ oh. _ _ That _ was the color of his eyes. Of course it was. Yellow. Hot yellow, almost luminous in the low light.

“Get out,” Crowley gritted, and the terra cotta pot flew sideways into the wall, faster even than he had thrown it, exploding into hundreds of pieces as it hit. They rained down on the floor with small glass noises.

Ezra surveyed the destruction. “I’d rather not,” he said.

Crowley hurled another piece of a pot at the wall, where it splintered.  _ “Get out!” _

Ezra wasn’t sure how Crowley was talking intelligibly with those teeth, but he decided not to worry about it. “No. What happened to you?”

“Nothing  _ happened _ to me, I  _ happen _ to other people.”

“I can’t think you would destroy something as extensive as this collection of plants—“ Ezra reached down to pick up some sort of palmlike plant, and then drew back sharply as it  _ flinched. _ “Oh. Goodness. That’s unusual.”

“That’s what they’re  _ for,” _ Crowley said. “To get desstroyed. To get  _ punished. _ To have just enough basic, lobsster-level ssentience to live in fear, sso that I have ssomething  _ there _ when I lose my—“ He broke off.

“When you lose your temper,” Ezra completed quietly. “They’re here to keep everyone else safe.” He stepped carefully into the room.

“Go away!”

“I think we’ve already established that’s not going to happen.” Ezra picked his way carefully across the minefield of pottery shards. “Something bad happened.”

Crowley choked out a laugh. “Yeah. Yeah. Ssomething bad happened.”

“Tell me about it.”

_ “I did _ ssomething bad. I’m going to do ssomething bad. I  _ ssigned _ for it.”

Ezra crouched down near Crowley and brushed the dirt from where he intended to kneel. He could tell, now, that Crowley had gone entirely snake-like below the hips, almost like a mermaid, and the huge black wings sprouted from his shoulders. His face was half-scaled, not entirely human-like, with room for extra needle-sharp teeth in his jaws. There were smaller snakes wound through his hair, and around his arms, and they were watching Ezra with what should have been a disconcerting number of yellow eyes, but suddenly and strangely seemed to be the right number of eyes to look at someone with. “I take it,” Ezra said, “that  _ signed for it _ may not mean entirely the same thing to you that it does to me.”

“My hand, my will, my flame. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to get out of the contract, you undersstand, I’ll find mysself  _ doing it anyway. _ Now will you please  _ go away?” _

“I think,” Ezra said, “you’re ignoring a crucial element of this situation.”

“Which is?”

“I’m not afraid of you.” Ezra put his hand carefully on Crowley’s cheek, and leaned forward, and kissed him gently on the forehead.

The scales were smooth under his lips.

Crowley and the snakes hissed and recoiled in unison. “You don’t—don’t—“

“I think perhaps you’re afraid of me. You don’t have to be.” Ezra took Crowley’s hand, the one he wasn’t propping himself up with. “I won’t hurt you. I won’t leave you.”

Crowley snatched the hand back. “No.  _ No. _ Angel, don’t.”

“Why not?” Ezra felt unexpectedly, impossibly bold. “We’ve been  _ dating _ for months, and don’t tell me that’s not what’s going on. You routinely do things just because you think it will make me happy. Including doing  _ something _ to theaters all over London so that you can show me your favorite movies. You love me.”

“You don’t love me.”

“Not your decision to make, dearest.”

“You  _ don’t. _ Aziraphale, I know you, I’ve known you, I’ve known who you used to be, in your passt lives, and you never felt like thiss.”

“I’ll add that to the increasingly long list of things I don’t care about. My past lives don’t get a look in. This is what  _ I _ feel.”

“I gave it to you.”

“What do you mean?”

“Last time—trying to find your memories, I touched your mind, and—how I felt got mixed up with you. Ssomehow. I don’t even know how.  _ Thiss isn’t you.” _

“It’s who I am now,” Ezra said. He put a finger to Crowley’s lips as he started to say something. “Yes, I started out feeling a—a very odd pull towards you, and yes, that may have been something you did. It isn’t why I kept on.  _ That’s _ because you’re the person I want to talk to most in the world, and you listen to me ramble, and I listen to you ramble, and you try to make me happy, and you lose your temper to protect me even though your temper frightens you enough to keep a Safety Plant Room, and you wore uncomfortable contact lenses to make sure I wasn’t afraid—actually, I’m just guessing at that last, but really, my dear, you don’t have to. Your eyes are beautiful.”

Crowley was staring at Ezra with an excruciatingly  _ lost _ look, all pain and yearning and certainty of rejection. “Aziraphale,” he whispered, “I’m a demon. I’ll never be anything  _ but _ a demon. You can’t—bring me back, or fix me, or whatever you’re thinking.”

Ezra caressed the side of Crowley’s face, mindful of the direction of the scales. “Why would I ever want to fix you? You’re beautiful. You’re wonderful. Exactly the way you are.”

Crowley made a choked, broken sound and leaned into the caress. Ezra gathered him—very carefully, mindful of the snakes—into his arms.

§

Crowley had to stop this.

Ezra’s arms were around him, heedless of the scales or the wings or the forked tongue that meant Crowley was talking largely with the help of miracles. And Crowley had to stop it. It was taking advantage. It was  _ wrong. _

Any minute. Any minute he would stop it.

Sighing, and putting his head on Ezra’s shoulder, and putting his wings around them both wasn’t stopping it. He shouldn’t do that.

He was doing that.


	14. A Three Cup Problem

Slowly, haltingly, without moving his head from Ezra’s shoulder, Crowley told Ezra the whole story.

First, he had messed up the mobile network. That was part of what he was expected to do, part of his job, but he would be lying if he said he didn’t enjoy it, the strategizing, the cleverness, all the little pieces lining up like a grand flush right before you lay it on the table. Because he  _ wasn’t a good person, _ that was the thing to remember. When he brought down the mobile network, people cursed each other, and took out their frustrations on each other, and some souls would slip over the threshold to Hell, and it all came back to Crowley and a few hundred rats.

“Rats?”

“My army,” Crowley said. “I get on all right with most animals that humans think are vermin. And rats are the most useful. They’ve got little pink hands, for hell’s sake!”

At any rate, Crowley had just got through bringing down the mobile network, and was happily on his way back to their meeting—all right, their date—when he got the summons. Two high-ranking demons. Hastur and Ligur.

Whenever Hastur and Ligur were involved, it was no longer a nice day.

Crowley had driven out to the meeting place, which was predictably a desecrated graveyard, and received a basket, and received his instructions. Take the basket. Take the baby in the basket. See that he’s switched with the baby of an American diplomat, and then, later, when the child was old enough, teach him evil.

Because the baby was the Antichrist. The Antichrist was alive and on Earth, and that meant that the whole thing would be a puddle of burning goo in eleven years, and there was nothing Crowley could do about it.

And it meant Ezra was going to die.

The odds of Crowley surviving the war were decent if not great, he was a good enough talker to get himself out of a front-line role and into weapons development or something, but Ezra was going to die.

And it was that thought—the thought of having killed his best friend and the person he had been hopelessly in love with for centuries—that led Crowley back here, led him to destroy his entire garden, and probably the rest of his flat if Ezra hadn’t arrived—

“Crowley,” Ezra said gently, “look at me.”

Crowley didn’t move, except to angle some of his snakes to look at Ezra.

“Look at me, Crowley.”

Of course, he didn’t register the snakes as part of Crowley. Crowley drew back reluctantly and looked at him with his main eyes.

“I’m not dead yet,” Ezra said.

“You will be.”

“Yes,  _ eventually, _ because I’m human, but I’m hardly going down without a fight, am I? You’re right. This is a rather upsetting situation. I’ll get us some tea.”

Crowley stared at him, and wondered, not for the first time, if Aziraphale had got that way because he spent so long in England, or if England had got that way because it spent so long with Aziraphale. “Some tea.”

“It’s a three-cup problem,” Ezra half-quoted. “Only, I’m not entirely sure I can find your kitchen. I kept getting the impression that the walls were shifting on me—“

“They don’t. It’s just a confusion hex. Here, let me.” Crowley put his hand on Ezra’s face, guiding him to look directly into Crowley’s eyes, and then reached in with his mind and unpicked the shadows and delusions that came with the hex. Being  _ very _ careful not to touch anything else. “That should do it.”

Ezra took a deep breath. “Yes. Quite. That—instant of dizziness, when I was looking into your eyes. That’s normal?”

“It was about thirty seconds of dizziness,” Crowley corrected. “I turned off your mind for a little bit. You have no  _ idea _ how much I could hurt you if I wanted to. You really should run.”

“I think we’ve already been over that, my dear. I’ll get the tea.”

§

Confusion hex or not, Crowley’s apartment was still forboding and confusing.

Was it insulting, Ezra wondered, to think of it as Crowley’s lair? Was  _ lair _ an inherently insulting word? Because there was a distinct  _ lair-ness _ about the space, but he should probably be careful with that, because there were undoubtedly plenty of ways that humans were unknowingly racist against Crowley, and Ezra didn’t want to contribute to them.

The kitchen was not in a place where Ezra would have kept a kitchen, but it was gleaming and modern, with granite countertops and stainless steel appliances and no sign that it had ever been used. Ezra half-expected the cupboards to be empty, but no. He found several containers of tea. With teabags, not the looseleaf that Ezra usually insisted on, but it was tea.

He put the kettle on.

Antichrist. How on Earth was he supposed to cope with the Antichrist?

For years, Ezra had been reading books in which people saved the world. He felt almost as if he had  _ anticipated  _ this. But that didn’t mean he had any idea what came next.

He went out to the—throne room? Still not a living room—and peered into the bookcase.

There was no organization that he could see. A first edition of  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel, _ and the rest of the series, right next to— “Nostradamus?” Ezra said quietly to himself.

“I’ve been through the prophecy books. Not tonight, but before. They aren’t much help. Some of them talk about what’s going to happen. Nothing about how to stop it.”

Ezra turned quickly.

Crowley was human-shaped again. No scales, no wings, no snakes. And he was wearing his dark glasses.

“What?” Crowley said, after a moment.

“You don’t have to. I was all right with the other way.” More than all right, actually. Ezra hadn’t been lying when he said Crowley was beautiful. “Where did all the snakes go?”

Crowley tapped his tattoo.

Ezra peered closely at it. “It isn’t a tattoo, is it.”

“It’s where I go when I get put away,” Crowley said. “Or—the snakes. Me. Same thing. Sort of. I’ve never tried to explain it in English before.” He hesitated, and then burst out, “How are you this  _ calm?” _

“Not quite sure,” Ezra admitted. “I don’t think I  _ am _ entirely calm about the Antichrist business. It’s more that my mind is still taking a run-up at grasping the situation. I think—oh, there’s the tea. Half a moment.”

He went in, made the tea, found a tea tray to put it on along with milk and sugar, and brought it back out to the throne room. And blinked at it. A sofa and an armchair had appeared to the right of the bookcase, with a coffee table between them. Crowley was ignoring them in favor of looking at the bookcase.

Ezra decided not to make a fuss about it and put the tea service down on the coffee table. “You, too,” he said. “If anyone’s nerves need calming, it’s yours, right now.”

Crowley paced over to the sofa, sprawled on it, and produced a bottle of Talisker from behind himself. “You drink the tea. I’m going to get absolutely pissed, and then I was thinking I might try sloshed or possibly wasted.”

“If you like, but I still need you to tell me about the Antichrist, my dear. Who he is, what he’s supposed to do, how—“ Ezra hesitated. “How the world ends.”

Crowley looked for a moment as if he were going to ask what the point was, but he took a pull on the bottle instead. “Tadfield,” he said. “All happens in a place called Tadfield.”

“Is that in Nostradamus?”

Crowley shook his head. “No, I think this is some new notion of Hell’s. I only heard about it recently. Before that, everyone was talking up the Plains of Megiddo, but then all the sudden it was  _ little town in England, Tadfield, bet you’ve never heard of it. _ It’s where I handed over the Antichrist, anyway. Had to deal with Satanic nuns. Do you have any idea how embarrassing it is to deal with Satanic nuns? They get  _ reverent.” _

Ezra made a sympathetic noise. “I can see how that would be difficult, yes. And the Antichrist grows up in Tadfield?”

Crowley hesitated. “I’ll—I’ll have to—“ He frowned, and turned his head away. “There’s a lot of information, but I tried to lock it away. Don’t like that stuff rattling around in my head. I want to be sure which thoughts are mine.” He was silent for a moment. “The boy's father is an ambassador. It looks like the current plan is a summer house in Tadfield. Minor demonic miracle to convince the parents they’d rather have their holidays there than in the south of France, or the Bahamas. Armageddon starts on the Antichrist’s eleventh birthday, so it’ll be in the summer.”

“What happens then?”

“That much is in the prophecies. Sort of. The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. War, Famine, Death, Pollution—“

“Pollution?”

“Pestilence retired. Not sure why.  _ I _ think there’s plenty of diseases in the world to be getting on with. But they were never part of  _ our _ lot, you know? Independent of Heaven and Hell. I’m not sure what they are or where they come from, just that they’re big and nasty and you don’t want to mess with the bastards if you can help it.”

Ezra nodded. “Eleven is a bit  _ young _ to be the ultimate evil, isn’t it?”

“He’ll be plenty evil enough when I’m done with him,” Crowley said grimly. “I told you. I can’t stop that.”

“No. No, if I’ve learned anything from fairy tales, it’s that there’s always a way to make a wish go wrong. The same has to be true of a, a pact, or a contract, or whatever you signed.”

“Work order is closest.”

“Work order, then. There have to be ways to subvert it.”

Crowley took a long swallow of Scotch and leaned his head back. “I can do a bit. I can choose what  _ kind _ of evil to concentrate on. Try to find stuff that doesn’t leave much of a mark. See if I can make the kid covet something on Earth, so that maybe he isn’t keen to see it go up in smoke. But I don’t think it’ll be enough.”

“So we have to weight the scales another way. Another influence—how were you planning on teaching the child to be evil, anyway?”

“Thought I’d sign on as a nanny,” Crowley said. “Rich people usually want them. And these parents were specially chosen because they wouldn’t notice minor issues like their little demonspawn being  _ actual demonspawn, _ so I think we can safely say they won’t be very involved.” Crowley took another pull on the bottle. “Although he should be completely innocuous and human-seeming until he comes into his own, and even then he’ll resist detection unless he’s actively showing someone his power. Can’t have the humans catching on before it’s too late.”

“A nanny?” Ezra couldn’t hide his skepticism.

Crowley sat up, looked at him for a moment, and changed. Ezra couldn’t say  _ what _ she changed, this time—it certainly wasn’t a dramatic shift like the one between wings-and-scales and her current form—but she was suddenly, and definitely, female.

“I’ll style my hair,” Crowley said.

Ezra blinked at her for a long moment, and then said, “All right. So you’ll be the nanny. But—“ He thought about it. “The child will have other influences. Other people around him. What if I entered the household too? Perhaps as a tutor, or a driver, or—or you could teach me about plants, and I could be the gardener. I could try to cancel you out.”

Crowley went back to being a man through some alchemy Ezra wasn’t clear on and shook his head. “You can’t. You’re human.”

Ezra stiffened. Then he said, “I believe I detected a hint of  _ only _ in there.”

“What if you did? You’re powerless, Ezra. I’ve been manipulating humans since the beginning, and I do mean the  _ Beginning. _ Maybe once you could have done it. Once, you would have been the first person I ran to. But—you changed.”

“If we’re to continue dating, my dear, I think we have to address your attitude towards humans.”

Crowley froze. Absolutely still, not even breathing. Then he said, “I like humans. Shouldn’t, but I do.”

“But you don’t respect them.”

Another silence. Then Crowley said, “I respect some of them, for being absolute mad bastards, but that doesn’t change the fact that  _ I have more power. _ You have no  _ idea _ of the ways I could hurt you.”

“Go on, then,” Ezra said. “Give us a good fright.”

Silence. Stillness.

Ezra let it go on for a little while before he said, “I can’t help but think, if there was anything in the work order about eliminating other influences on the boy, you’d find yourself able to do it. In the name of protecting me, if nothing else. I know you’ll do things that upset you, to accomplish that.”

Crowley made a strangled noise. Ezra decided to take it as a sort of assent.

“I won’t be alone. You can help me, to the extent your own mission allows. After all, we’re on the same side in the end.” Ezra found himself smiling, and even wiggled slightly. “Do you know, I’ve never been someone’s godfather before?”

“Mad bastard,” Crowley muttered. But he sounded, for the first time that evening, as if he had pulled himself out of despondency and was thinking again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who are wondering why Hell knows about Tadfield . . . that's a question for rather later in the story.


	15. Autumn

Having demonic powers on his side, Ezra, reflected, was going to take some getting used to.

For a start, there was the money. Crowley was, effectively, as rich as he needed to be, plus a little more for style. When Ezra wondered how he was going to learn gardening as well as run the bookshop, Crowley shrugged and suggested closing the bookshop—no, not  _ selling _ it, why would he have to sell it? Crowley could take care of the rent, as well as giving Ezra as much money as he needed.

Crowley also decided to buy Ezra a house in Tadfield. “Thing is,” he said, “a nanny follows the family when they go on holiday, if they’re as detached from child-raising as I expect them to be. A gardener stays with the garden. So that would give me—how many months of holiday does an ambassador take, do you figure? Maybe three months more per year to get my influence in than you’ll have with yours. But if you coincidentally take time off—I can make sure they don’t dismiss you for it—and stay in Tadfield for the summer, the kid can come over to your place for lemonade and moralizing any time he likes.”

“A gardener,” Ezra said, “doesn’t typically have a summer house.”

“He won’t notice anything weird about it, he’s a kid. And I can take care of the parents.”

Ezra told his conscience that he wasn’t being given things for free, he was being given things to  _ help save the world, _ and there really wasn’t a better reason for accepting them. He went with Crowley to Tadfield to pick out a cottage.

Once outside London, Crowley floored it. Ezra protested. Crowley made a noise of frustration. “Listen, it’s not—I understand why you wanted me to slow down, you thought I was a human, and I wanted to make you feel safe, but you  _ are _ safe. You—I’ll show you.”

He twisted the wheel and sent them straight for a telephone pole.

Ezra made a high-pitched noise that wasn’t quite a scream, but certainly didn’t have any dignity to it. He didn’t have time to grab for a handhold. The telephone pole jumped out of the way and Crowley steered them back onto the road. Ezra struggled for breath and risked a glance in the rearview mirror. The telephone pole hopped back into place. Ezra’s imagination said that it looked very confused. For a telephone pole, anyway.

“I’m the safest driver on the road,” Crowley explained, “because nothing stays in my way if I don’t  _ want _ it in my way. The only way I’m going to crash into anything is if I stop paying attention, and I’m not going to. And no, the Bentley isn’t in good condition because ‘other drivers’ took care of her. I stole her new.”

Ezra took deep breaths, trying to convince his heart to stop slamming against his ribcage, or at least not to do it so  _ fast. _ The ride hadn’t even gone rougher when they hit the grass. “You couldn’t have just  _ told _ me that?”

Crowley shrugged. “You didn’t believe me the last time I told you I wouldn’t hit anything.”

“That was before I factored  _ magic powers _ into the equation!” Ezra sat back, upset, and did his best to adjust to the idea that  _ barrelling along at one-twenty _ was synonymous with  _ actually perfectly safe. _ His stomach was unconvinced.

Crowley was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Giant snake creature, just fine. A little fast in a car, and you’re shaking. I don’t understand you sometimes.”

“I’m not frightened of  _ you, _ I’m frightened of dying in a fiery explosion! The two cases have nothing whatsoever in common.”

“How did you even know it was  _ me, _ anyway?”

“If your concentration is the only thing between us and certain death, I doubt we should be having this discussion, or any discussion!  _ Watch the road, _ Crowley!”

“Right,” Crowley snapped, “Fine. Peachy.” He glared through the windshield as if it had done him personal injury, and they drove in silence for a while.

By the time they spotted a sign actually pointing them to Tadfield, rather than just Oxfordshire, Ezra was feeling guilty about having snapped at him. “I’m sorry,” Ezra said softly.

“No. You don’t apologize to me. I’m a demon, I’m  _ definitionally _ in the wrong.”

“Ah, so still cross, then.”

“I am not still cross!”

Ezra felt that one didn’t require a response. The tone of Crowley’s voice rather spoke for itself.

_ “I _ wasn’t cross to begin with,” Crowley said.  _ “You _ started an argument with  _ me.” _

“I’m not at my best when I’m shaking from adrenaline. Do demons have adrenaline?”

The question seemed to throw Crowley somewhat. “Probably not? I mean, this body, it isn’t even really made of matter. It’s more of a—a concept gone solid. A really complicated, self-sustaining concept—wouldn’t want it disappearing when I sleep—but I can change it round however I like, except for the eyes. A hundred feet long, two inches long, doesn’t matter.”

“No conservation of mass.” It was something people went on about somewhat, when they wanted to prove that fantasy was junk literature: many spells, as described, entirely ignored conservation of mass. Ezra had always maintained that those people were entirely missing the point, not only of fantasy, but of literature in general. He still couldn’t help but feel ever-so-slightly vindicated.

All the same, he had to wonder about it as they rocketed towards Tadfield. Crowley clearly had something enough  _ like _ adrenaline to feel rage and its aftermath. Ezra hadn’t forgotten the way he had started shaking, after hurting the would-be robber—no, best not to sugar-coat things, after  _ nearly killing _ the would-be robber.

Ezra decided not to ask about it. After all, Crowley really might need his concentration for driving.

§

House-hunting in Tadfield was somewhat expedited by demonic powers. Ezra told Crowley firmly that they were restricting themselves to houses that were actually on the market. Crowley protested that he could make someone sell by making sure they came into a lot of money and wanted to trade up, but Ezra was adamant.

Ezra couldn’t help but notice that Crowley wasn’t actually upset about having lost the argument.

As they followed the sales agent, Ezra wondered what people made of him and Crowley. Ezra felt rather like a kept man, at the moment. And he was still trying to sort out the fact that, aside from the nagging guilt, it wasn’t entirely an unpleasant feeling. Crowley’s willingness to reorder the universe for him was . . . heady. Intoxicating. Tempting.

When was the last time someone had just  _ indulged _ Ezra?

Actually, had anyone ever just indulged him?

He wondered what it would be like, being Crowley’s lover. If demons did that sort of thing. Certainly Crowley didn’t seem to  _ need _ that sort of thing. But if he wanted it . . .

They had lunch in a small café, a café that did a remarkably good bacon quiche. Crowley contented himself with coffee, and Ezra wondered if he had anything to do with the food being as good as it was. He had thought that food in Crowley’s presence tasted good because of the company. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?” Ezra asked.

Crowley shook his head.

The last cottage they looked at was the smallest, but Ezra liked the way the rooms were laid out, and the huge windows. “It hasn’t been kept up,” he admitted, “but it’s lovely, really.”

“It’s also just down the street from where I  _ think _ the Dowlings are going to be set up,” Crowley said. “Easy bicycling range, for a kid. I think it’ll work.”

“Well, then.”

On their way out, Crowley critically eyed some vines. “Those are meant to be climbing roses.”

“How can you tell?”

“Shape of the leaves. They’re also meant to be blooming right now.”

“Maybe they haven’t been fertilized lately,” said Ezra. He was determined to learn everything there was to learn about plants, and had been reading up accordingly. Plants, as it turned out, were more complicated than you would think. Green things that stuck out of the ground, how complicated could they be? A lot, apparently. He studied the leaves of the roses, trying to commit the pattern to memory so he could identify them as easy as Crowley had.

“No excuse,” Crowley said. His body language shifted subtly, becoming smoother and more predatory. “I won’t be taking excuses. Understood? You  _ will _ bloom at an appropriate time, and you  _ will _ perform adequately, or you’ll find out how slowly a plant can die with its roots in a bucket of lye,  _ do I make myself clear?” _

There was a pause, and then tiny pops as small roses bloomed here and there on the vines.

“Better,” Crowley said grudgingly, and turned away from the plants.

Ezra thought about this on the way back to the car. “Dear,” he said consideringly, after he had got in and performed the now-familiar ritual of automatically looking for and not finding a seatbelt, “I think it would probably be best if I learned gardening from other humans.”

§

Crowley sat down on the rough stone wall beside Ezra and handed him a sack lunch and a thermos. She was being a woman right now, to make sure that Ezra didn’t attract undue attention, and she thought that perhaps it was putting Ezra off. “How is it so far?”

“I’m exhausted and I’m fairly sure that a number of people have called me a great poofter behind my back,” Ezra said. “Also thirsty and famished.” He poured himself a cup of water, knocked it back, and then gave Crowley an odd look. “What did you put in this water?”

“Sekanjabin,” Crowley said. “With mint. It’s a Middle Eastern—syrup, sort of. It’s supposed to help.”

“With what, exactly?”

“Not sure. I just remember . . .” Crowley looked away. “I remember you coming in from the fields with a group of humans, and they passed around a waterskin with sekanjabin, or close enough, and you told me to try some . . .” It had been hot, Crowley recalled. Blisteringly hot, even with the evening coming on. Aziraphale had sat on a wall, then, too, only that wall had been rough red brick. “This was in—Akkadia? I think? Somewhere near Babylon.”

Ezra was quiet for a long moment. “This was one of my previous incarnations.”

“This was the original,” Crowley corrected. It gave her a pang, even with Ezra beside her. “This was Aziraphale.”

Ezra looked out across the lawn. Crowley had found him an apprenticeship at the Chiswick Gardens so that he could pursue his mad plan of becoming a gardener and balancing out Crowley’s influence—a mad plan that was giving Crowley an uncomfortable amount of hope right now, so maybe she should come up with a more hopeful description.

“How do you know it was me?” Ezra asked.

It was a question that Crowley wanted to ask him. Scaly snake-monster with wings, and Ezra had gone instantly to  _ Crowley, are you all right? _ How? “You look the same. Sound the same. Move the same. Besides, there’s a sort of—don’t know how to describe it—an underlying  _ taste. _ In the air.”

“Not entirely the way reincarnation is supposed to work,” Ezra said. “Looking the same. Having a similar name—I did notice, how close  _ Aziraphale _ is to  _ Ezra Fell. _ You’d think someone would have caught on.”

“This isn’t a normal reincarnation. Normally, reincarnation isn’t a thing. Souls go to Heaven, or they go to Hell, or occasionally they slip through the cracks and become ghosts, although both sides field agents to track those down. No, you—I don’t know what you are, exactly.” Was that a tactless way to put it? That was probably a tactless way to put it. “You  _ were _ an angel. Aziraphale was.”

“My goodness.” Ezra dug into the bag and made a pleased noise as he discovered the sausage rolls. “Wouldn’t an angel normally take a certain amount of exception to you? Not that I think that would be  _ correct, _ but you are on opposite sides.”

“You would think.” Crowley thought about how best to present the story. “So, right after the Garden of Eden goes live, the Princes of Hell ask for a volunteer. Get up there, make some trouble. High prestige, but also high risk; as if the angelic guards aren’t bad enough, there’s God herself. I knew I might not come back. Didn’t really care. I just had to be  _ out _ of there. So I volunteered.” He poured himself some sekanjabin-flavored water out of his own thermos, which hadn’t been there a moment ago. “Came up through the ground. Went full snake as a disguise. The next bit’s in the book.”

Ezra looked taken aback. At least it wasn’t appalled. “Yes,” he said slowly, “I believe it is. Weren’t you cursed to crawl on your stomach?”

“I do when I’m a snake. That’s the problem with the Bible: it’s a mixture of unvarnished fact, complete hearsay, and random things that people made up, with a generous helping of orphaned parables that are presented to  _ look _ like fact, and unless you lived through it, it’s painfully difficult to guess which is which. They didn’t get you completely right, either. Think they have you down as the wrong rank. The Bible says that cherubim guard the gates of Eden, and you were a principality. It’s true that principalities have a reputation for being stronger and solider than you’d expect, but if a cherub decides they don’t want that city there, it goes away. Completely different levels of power. Terrifying, vicious bastards.” Crowley was quiet for a moment. “Anyway, once all the shouting was done, I really,  _ really _ wanted to delay going back to Hell. So I see an angel on the wall, think, ‘Hmm, he isn’t holding a flaming sword, doesn’t look too scary, maybe I should try and talk.’ And I talked to you.”

“And he talked to you?”

“Not comfortably,” Crowley admitted. “I thought you were a prat.”

“Ah.”

“Until I asked what happened to your flaming sword.”

“What happened to it?”

“Well, Adam and Eve had just been exiled, out into a wilderness full of lions and jackals and hyenas, a desert that got  _ bloody _ cold at night, which you knew from standing guard on that wall—what would you have done with a flaming sword?”

“Give it to them and wish them good luck,” Ezra said promptly. “I should hope, anyway. Exactly what constraints an actual angel would be laboring under—“

“Weren’t going to come  _ close _ to stopping you.”

“Wait, you’re saying I actually did it?”

“Yup.”

“Gave away the flaming sword that was supposed to guard Eden?”

“I must have made something like that expression when you told me.”

“But,” Ezra stuttered, “but, you’re trying to tell me that I was  _ Prometheus.” _

Crowley thought about it. “You never got chained to anything,” he said, “except Earth. And you liked that, just as much as I did. It’s  _ good _ up here. Always something happening. Always something growing. How are the tulips, by the way?”

“Tulips,” Ezra said, “insist on being planted unreasonably deep, and I wish to make a complaint.” He considered it. “Actually, no. If everything you’ve told me is true—and I don’t see any reason why you would lie to me—there’s at least a chance that complaints would be listened to, and I’m not sure I wish to attract that sort of attention.”


	16. Winter

There was still gardening work in the winter, Ezra discovered. Pruning, mulching, other things. Mostly laying the groundwork for what happened in the spring.

Laying groundwork for what would happen when Warlock was four or five. Old enough to start being taught.

“His name is honestly  _ Warlock,” _ Ezra said to Crowley one evening in Ezra’s flat, over several bottles of wine.

“Blame the nuns,” Crowley said, and poured himself a generous measure of wine. “Satanists of all sorts, limited grasp of subtlety. I’ve dealt with them before.”

“Why would the parents go along with it, though?

“Rich humans. Rich humans are always naming their children Apple or Cheese or Prince Indigo Moonlight. ‘Warlock’ is just more of the same.” He thought about it. “Either that, or they didn’t know what it means.”

The evening went on pleasantly. Crowley—who had put away a staggering amount of wine, and only recently started seeming tipsy—absently took his glasses off and put them on the table under the lamp. Ezra realized he was holding his breath, and made himself stop. If he made a big deal out of seeing Crowley’s eyes, Crowley would get spooked again, and—

Ezra himself was tipsy enough to blurt out, “Your eyes aren’t the same.”

Crowley went rigid, apparently realizing that he had taken the glasses off at that moment. “I have a  _ little _ control over them,” he said, and reached for his glasses.

“No, please don’t! You don’t have to. I like your eyes.” In fact, he thought he liked them better the way they had been in the plant room, without whites. Crowley had done something to contract his irises to a merely human size, and it made them slightly less striking, slightly less mesmerizing.

“You don’t, though,” Crowley said.

“Aziraphale didn’t like them?”

“He never said directly, so I’m not sure. But we were definitely closer after I started wearing the glasses. After Rome.”

“That doesn’t have any bearing on what  _ I _ think,” Ezra said. “I’m the one who’s here now.”

Crowley shook his head. But he didn’t put the glasses back on until he left for the evening.

Ezra wondered, sometimes, how Crowley intended to make Warlock turn to evil. It bothered him. Many kinds of evil, as far as he could tell, seemed to come from pain of one sort or another. Would the work order Crowley had signed  _ compel _ him to be cruel to the boy? Ezra didn’t like to think so, but he didn’t entirely understand the rules that Crowley worked under.

That was demonstrated amply when Ezra heard someone say, “Jesus, man,” to Crowley, and flinched involuntarily, only to see that Crowley was struggling not to laugh at his reaction. “I’m hardly going to flee at the name,” Crowley said later, over supper, “considering that I met the man.”

Ezra blinked. “You met Jesus.”

“Yeah. Gave him some visions, actually.”

“Like what?”

Crowley thought about it. Then he said, “You want to see?”

The fact of magic was fascinating. Ezra was hardly going to turn down a chance to participate in it. “Of course.”

Crowley hesitated, then took off his dark glasses. “Then look at me.”

Ezra looked into his eyes.

This time, there wasn’t even a moment of dizziness. There was sunlight, and a canoe or something similar rocking on the water, and there was a magnificent city rising in front of him with a pyramid in the center, and he could  _ smell the water, _ even, he was  _ there— _

He was back in the restaurant.

Crowley was putting his glasses back on.

Ezra took a moment to find his voice. That had been disorientingly  _ real. _ “Where was that?”

“Cuicuilco. On Lake Texcoco, in Mexico. Beautiful place. Pity about the volcano.” Crowley refilled his wine glass. “I asked Yeshua if he wanted to go there with me. Forget the mission, go on a grand tour. All the kingdoms of the world. He turned me down.”

A world tour with Crowley, Ezra thought, was significantly more tempting than the Biblical tradition, where “the devil” had offered Jesus the kingdoms of the world to  _ rule. _ Or perhaps that was just him, wanting to tour the world with Crowley?

“Tell me something,” Crowley said. “I understand that you trust me, but I don’t understand  _ why. _ I’ve used miracles around you enough, by now. You have to have figured out how badly I could hurt you, body and mind. Why aren't you running?”

“Honestly,” Ezra said, “it never occurred to me not to trust you. You aren’t going to hurt me, are you?”

“Ngh—no, but—”

“Exactly.” Ezra dabbed his mouth with his napkin. He definitely shouldn’t say,  _ I’d like you to use your powers on me more, actually, in certain specific ways that will make me blush if I try to talk about them . . . _ No. “When we stop Armageddon, we should take a vacation.” All the kingdoms of the world.

“If we stop Armageddon.”

“I was attempting to engage the power of positive thinking.”

§

“I honestly didn’t know there was so much  _ involved _ in pruning,” Ezra said to Crowley over lunch. They were inside, thank goodness, because it was bitterly cold.

Crowley was presenting as female right now, and it enthralled Ezra. He wasn’t sure if there was a physical change or whether it was the power Crowley had over people’s minds. Ezra had never particularly thought of himself as being attracted to women—before Crowley, he had been uncertain he would ever be attracted to anyone—but Crowley held the same fascination for him whatever her gender.

“Did you know,” Ezra went on, “that Japanese maple over there is a Frankensteinian abomination?”

“A what now?”

“The base of it is an ordinary maple. Then they attached branches from a more delicate variety with more beautiful leaves so that they could live off the trunk of the original plant. It’s either very clever or mildly horrifying, depending on how you look at it.”

“It’s just grafting,” Crowley said.

“I think my description has more poetic verve.”

Spring crept nearer. Snowdrops lived up to their name and pushed through the snow, or at least the melting slush.

“We’ll manage it, you know,” Ezra reassured Crowley, at Crowley’s apartment, when he fell into a bleak mood. “Yes, being a gardener is more involved than I thought it was going to be, but you can make sure I get hired. I’ll be there. I’ll do my part.” He looked away. “I suppose you wish you had Aziraphale right now.”

“You are Aziraphale,” Crowley said. And then contradicted himself almost instantly by saying, “It’d be a lot easier for him. I watched him bless the fields, once in a while. Sprouts would come out of the ground while you watched. Well. While I watched.”

“I wish I could do that,” Ezra said sincerely. “Was that one of his jobs? Making sure harvests were rich?”

“Well, Famine—he benefits our side, more often than not. Humans doing horrible things for another bite of food.” Crowley thought about it. “I don’t know if anyone ever actually ordered you to increase the harvests, or if you came up with it on your own. Aziraphale wouldn’t tell me. Heaven’s orders, none of my business. But you did it regularly.”

§

“What carries over, between incarnations?” Ezra asked one day in early spring. They were out at the Tadfield cottage. It was a bit of a busman’s holiday for Ezra Fell, apprentice gardener, because he was planting gladiolus bulbs.

Granted, the cottage didn’t have to look like a welcoming place for a child until Warlock was old enough to be welcomed by it. But Ezra reasoned that it wouldn’t hurt to get into practice.

“Not really sure,” Crowley admitted. Crowley was also gardening, meaning he was threatening the shrubbery. He had declined to berate the gladiolus bulbs. Ezra wasn’t sure why. “I—“ Crowley sighed and sat down on the grass beside Ezra, a much smoother and more grateful motion than Ezra was capable of. It might be a problem, Ezra acknowledged to himself, in countering Crowley’s influence: the demon made things look  _ cool, _ and kids were all complete suckers for cool. Ezra didn’t want to be the uncool option, and he wasn’t sure how to avoid it.

“It all goes wrong,” Crowley said. He was looking away from Ezra. “With the humans. Every time.”

“How many times?”

“Adelard, Antoine, Zacharias, Feldman, and Alex. And you. Six human lives that I know of. Some of them shorter than they should have been.”

Ezra was quiet. He was mulling over something, and he wasn’t entirely sure how to articulate it. It was a complicated tangle of  _ what is identity anyway, _ with reincarnation mixed in for extra confusion. Crowley loved Aziraphale. He acted as if he loved Ezra. But—was it the same thing?

That night, they lit a fire in the cottage, and Ezra made them cocoa. Sitting side by side on the sofa, Ezra felt bold enough to take Crowley’s hand.

Crowley drew in his breath. Ezra stopped. “No further than you want. No faster than you want. I don’t—“ Ezra hesitated. “I don’t actually know how demons do these things.”

“They don’t,” Crowley said. It might have come out more harshly than he would have chosen, because his voice was quieter when he spoke again. “They don’t. Demons don’t form bonds like—like humans do.”

“When I found you in the plant room,” Ezra reminded him, “you said that you loved Aziraphale. ‘Hopelessly, for centuries,’ was your exact phrasing, I think.”

Crowley twitched. “Shouldn’t have said that.”

“Why not?”

“Because if you ever remember being Aziraphale, it’s going to make you  _ very _ uncomfortable. Angels don’t form bonds either.”

“So it’s down to humans, then,” Ezra said. “Humans and you.” He hesitated for a moment, and then reached out to let his hands hover near Crowley’s dark glasses. “May I?”

Crowley made a sound that wasn’t a word, but he nodded. Ezra took the glasses off, gently, and looked into Crowley’s eyes.

“I want to be with you,” Ezra said quietly, “in every way that you’re comfortable with.”

“You don’t.”

“This isn’t Aziraphale talking. This is me.  _ I _ want to be with you. I love you. And I don’t want to take more than you want to give, so please—give me some idea of where the boundaries lie.”

“If you think I wouldn’t do absolutely anything for you,” Crowley started, and then swallowed the rest of the sentence. “Angel, this isn’t you. This isn’t what you would choose.”

“I’m not an angel. This is exactly what  _ Ezra Fell _ chooses. To love you.”

“I don’t—“ Crowley’s voice broke. “I don’t know what to do.”

“Just tell me what you want.”

“Too many wants,” Crowley said. “Oceans of them.”

“Do you want me to get closer so that we can put our arms around each other?”

“Yes. Satan, yes. But it’s a bad idea, angel, it’s not—“

“Ezra,” Ezra said. “Not angel. Ezra.” He slid towards Crowley on the sofa.

“No,” Crowley said. “No. I’m sorry.”


	17. Spring

The thing Crowley hadn’t taken into account was that Aziraphale, in any incarnation, was actually blessed persuasive when he wanted to be.

He usually didn’t want to be. With Crowley, he usually didn’t have to be. Crowley had been perfectly willing to do silly things like boost one of Shakespeare’s more mediocre plays because Aziraphale gave him an imploring look. But now, Ezra wanted—closeness. Touch. Anything and everything that Crowley wanted to give, that he  _ couldn’t _ give, because Aziraphale would never have accepted it.

“I had made up my mind never to say this to you,” Ezra said quietly, after Crowley flinched away from a held hand and shouted for Ezra to stop  _ doing _ things like that, stop doing things he would hate later, “but there’s every possibility that he’s never coming back.”

It knocked the wind out of Crowley, so that for an instant he just mouthed silently at Ezra. “Well, it’s nice to know that you’re still capable of being  _ bloody cruel,” _ he managed finally, and regretted instantly. Aziraphale wasn’t cruel. Aziraphale  _ thought he had to be  _ cruel, because Heaven, because the Archangels, because of the relentless drip of poison from On High. There was a difference.

“I apologize, dearest. But it’s true.”

“Yes, I know bloody well that it’s true!” His voice was getting louder and he couldn’t stop it. “I  _ tried. _ I tried with Adelard.  _ You _ tried, both as Antoine and Zacharias, and if  _ you _ can’t work through a puzzle I’m not sure it can be done. I even tried with Alex, not even looking to restore you as an angel, just looking for the memories, and  _ that _ went wrong, you have no idea how wrong! I know bloody well that it’s probably hopeless but if I can’t crack it, I have to watch you age and die even if we stop Armageddon, and  _ I can’t face that! _ Not again. I don’t want to watch you die again, angel. I can’t.”

Ezra’s lip trembled ever-so-slightly. “I’d fix it if I could. I’d live forever with you if I could.”

“I know,” Crowley whispered.

Ezra didn’t bring it up again that night, which was a mercy. Aziraphale had always been merciful, whenever Heaven had allowed and some times when they hadn’t. But the subject lingered between them.

One night at Ezra’s flat, when he was exhausted beyond reason by the gardening work, Crowley gave in to impulse and clicked his fingers at him. Ezra blinked at him, and then looked down at his new pajamas with a delighted smile. “You’re going to sleep,” Crowley told him. “You’ve effectively showered, you’re dressed for bed, and you’re already nearly asleep on your feet. Come on. Bedtime.”

“I didn’t make my bed this morning,” Ezra protested. There was a slight slur in his voice.

“Don’t care. Come on.”

Ezra’s bedroom was, as Crowley had suspected, a place perfected for reading, complete with one of Ezra’s few indulgences: a heavy wood headboard with a reading light set into it and sliding paneled bookshelves. Crowley found out about the latter when Ezra pushed the panel aside, evidently to get at his current reading material. “None of that,” Crowley chided. “Sleep, or you won’t be good for anything in the morning.”

“I can’t fall asleep without reading.”

Crowley hesitated, then said, “You can if I help you.”

As usual, Ezra didn’t show any fear of miracles. Even the ones he really  _ should _ fear, the ones that touched his mind, the ones that could lead to the same mistake that Crowley had made with Alex. Ezra wiggled slightly. “That would be lovely,” he said, absolutely sincere.

Crowley had a mad impulse to kiss Ezra on the forehead. Instead, he brushed two fingers across it. “Sleep well, Ezra.” The  _ well _ part was as much of a command as the  _ sleep; _ Ezra would have perhaps the most restful sleep of his life.

Ezra blinked several times. “Come to bed?” It was a lot more slurred.

“Nrk! No. Let’s get you tucked in, you’re about to fall over.”

“Shouldn’t wait,” Ezra mumbled. “Only have ten years.” And then he was out cold.

_ Only have ten years. _

So Ezra had as much faith in their mad plan as Crowley did, which was to say, he  _ wanted _ to have all the faith in the world—but he didn’t.  _ I was attempting to engage the power of positive thinking, _ Ezra had said once. Crowley hadn’t realized that what he meant was,  _ I am trying to convince myself. _

He kept thinking about it. Couldn’t stop thinking about it.  _ Only have ten years. _

_ There’s every possibility that he’s never coming back. _

Even if he came back, even if Aziraphale was resurrected out of Ezra for Armageddon, what then? They were on opposite sides. Aziraphale did his duty, relentlessly, thanklessly, without any concern for his own happiness. Aziraphale would pick up a sword and fight, even as it made him wish he could die like a human. Aziraphale, when it came right down to it, would even fight Crowley if he had to. And Crowley couldn’t fight Aziraphale, both because Aziraphale was stronger and because  _ he couldn’t fight Aziraphale. _ The best thing they could hope for in the Final War was never to see each other on the battlefield. And then they would never see each other again.

And if Ezra stayed Ezra, then—then his soul would presumably go to Heaven or Hell based on the fact of  _ no more humans. _ And Crowley knew perfectly well that Hell, at least, would happily burn their human souls for extra power in the Final War. Just having the souls in their realm added to their store of miracle power, but  _ destroying _ a soul, that would produce a massive burst. The War would require massive bursts. Crowley would have to be a fool to think that Heaven wouldn’t do the same. So the odds of any human soul surviving Armageddon—well, they depended on how fast the War was won or lost, and virtually all the information Crowley could gather about that was naked propaganda. He thought that Hell would probably win, barring direct divine intervention, but what it would  _ cost _ them to win—that was something that none of the Princes wanted to talk about, and when the Princes of Hell didn’t want to talk about something, everyone else was well advised to shut up.

Satan, they  _ had _ to make this mad plan work. They  _ had  _ to raise Warlock to be, if not good, then at least a normal human, imperfect and venial and very much in favor of the world because (in the words of a cartoon Crowley wouldn’t admit to watching) it was where he kept all his stuff.

But even that was more of a plan to see Ezra safe. Because it wouldn’t go well for Crowley if Armageddon failed, would it? At best, it would put him on the run from Hell without a weapon.

They only had ten years.

§

It was on one of Ezra’s days off, and they were taking a walk in the park, enjoying the spring weather. Several children had come out with kites, and were having mixed success getting them off the ground. Crowley saw one child, six or so, nearly in tears because her kite wouldn’t launch, and, more because he wanted to see the kite than anything else, clicked his fingers. A brisk wind rushed through the park and all the kites took flight, at least for a moment. The six-year-old’s kite unfurled into an octopus, in truly unlikely colors. Maybe unlikely colors. What color was an actual octopus?

Crowley didn’t realize what it looked like until he realized that Ezra was beaming at him, even as he pulled his jacket closer around himself. “Shut it,” Crowley muttered, ears heating. “I was  _ not _ being nice to them. I don’t do that.”

Ezra smiled as if he knew something that Crowley didn’t. It was very annoying.

“It’s still remarkable to me,” Ezra said. “Miracles.”

“It’s just a thing,” Crowley said.

“It’s an extraordinary thing.”

“I’d think you’d resent it. I mean, human. God gave you dominion over all the creatures of the Earth,  _ said _ that you were made in Her image, supposedly favored you above everything else in the universe, but when it comes right down to it, if you want a flower planted, you have to dig the hole with your own hands. And then there’s us, with miracles that don’t just give us power over the world, they give us power over you. Don’t you hate it? Doesn’t it burn you up?”

Ezra shook his head. “It’s enough for me that you can do it, dear.”

“You trust me too much.”

“I trust you to the ends of the universe. Well,” Ezra amended, “on some things. I trust you with my life. I don’t trust coins on the pavement, anymore. Shall we feed the ducks?”

They fed the ducks. Crowley angled his head so that he could sneak little glances at Ezra while he did it. Ezra was happy, and Ezra when he was happy seemed to glow despite being entirely human. Crowley wondered how much of Aziraphale that he had taken for angelic—the way the room brightened when he smiled—had been something even more fundamental to him than his angelic nature. Something that carried over when everything else changed.

Or maybe Crowley was just in love. That was possible too.

How often had he seen Aziraphale without an underlying current of anxiousness? Less than he would have liked.

_ We only have ten years. _

Crowley amused himself by making the bread land on the other ducks, causing several duck fights. Ezra gave him a sidelong, mischievous glance, as if he knew exactly what Crowley was doing, but he didn’t mention it.

_ We only have ten years. _

§

“How  _ did _ you know?” Crowley asked the next week, over a bottle of wine in Ezra’s flat. Ezra was once again wearing light-colored clothes and the pink sleeveless jumper, which Crowley thought was a far better look on him than gardening clothes. If all went well, he would spend most of the rest of their ten years seeing Ezra in gardening clothes.

Ezra looked confused. “Know what?”

“Strange flat, doing funny things to your mind, and at the middle there’s a snake thing with extra snakes all over. How do you look at that situation and say, ‘Oh, that’s the man I’m taken with, better see that he’s all right?’ How did you even recognize me?”

Ezra was quiet for a moment. “Sometimes,” he said, “it feels like I always knew what color your eyes are.”

“Oh.” Crowley wasn’t sure what to think about that. It had to be a trace memory from Ezra’s other lives. Implying that they were buried within him, but Crowley couldn’t help him find them because he still didn’t know how he had corrupted Alex’s past life regressions, or if he would do it again, or even whether it carried over from life to life. But at the same time, if Ezra remembered his other lives, how did Crowley’s mistakes with the others not taint everything that came after?

“But I think I also knew when that plant pot stopped short of hitting me.”

Crowley looked away. “I didn’t realize it was you. When I threw it. And then I saw you, and—“

“And you would never hurt me,” Ezra completed softly. “I realized that the winged naga form must be you when I realized he would never hurt me.”

They might only have ten years left.

“You kissed me,” Crowley said.

Ezra straightened a little, which was impressive considering his already-straight posture. “I did.”

“Monster like that, and you kissed me.” 

“I told you at the time,” Ezra said, “you’re beautiful. You’re always beautiful.”

“Not to humans,” Crowley said. “Not like that.”

“To this human, then.” Ezra gave him a nakedly sincere look. His changeable eyes looked blue. “I—shouldn’t push. I know I shouldn’t. I just—I know the difference between  _ not wanting _ something and  _ denying yourself, _ and I want you to know that you don’t have to. Not for me. It’s always possible, even though I can’t imagine it now, that I’ll regret this later. But I take responsibility for that, Crowley. Do you understand?”

Crowley swallowed. “Would you—like to do it again? The kissing?”

“I’d like nothing more,” Ezra said softly, and rose from his chair.

“I’ve—you should know, I’ve never. Actually.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Ezra said.

It was awkward, involving noses colliding and getting in the way. It was too clumsy to be rapturous, to make the world dissolve around them. It was still the best kiss in the universe.


	18. Snails in the Garden

“Mr. Ezra, I found a  _ snail!” _

“That’s lovely, Warlock,” Ezra said. “Let me see.”

Warlock waved his trophy proudly as he trotted up. Ezra wondered if snails got dizzy. If they did, this one surely thought it was on some sort of fairground ride. “Look,” Ezra said, “he’s gone into his shell to protect himself.” He took the snail away from Warlock. “He probably thought you were a bird.” Although, Ezra supposed, it might as easily be a she.

Warlock laughed raucously, the way four year olds, Ezra had found, often did. “I don’t have feathers!”

“Well, he’s just a snail. He doesn’t have a very big brain. He probably thought that bright red shirt was your feathers. A crimson-bellied warblerlock.”

Warlock laughed even harder at  _ warblerlock, _ which made Ezra smile. “Now,” he said, addressing the creature with mock-seriousness, “I can’t have you on my roses, but I think I can find somewhere for you to live. Come on, Warlock, let’s find a place for this snail.” He added, with a little bit of trepidation, “Because what do we do with living things?”

“Nanny says grind them under our heel.”

“You don’t listen to her,” Ezra said. “You listen to me.”

“Nanny says that nature is red in tooth and claw and most animals exist to be eaten by something else, which is proof that God made the universe full of cruelty.”

The problem with Crowley, Ezra reflected, was that she was a very clever talker, and it wasn’t always easy to refute what she said—especially since Ezra was a human, with no sort of insight into the divine or the Grand Plan for the world or anything like that. He was just a human, fumbling along, trying to counter the world’s premiere tempter, the author of human sin, who didn’t actually have a choice about trying to make Warlock evil. Ezra was out of his depth. “I can’t say that I have all the answers,” he admitted carefully. The parenting books said that it was good to admit to children when you didn’t know something, unless not-knowing would reinforce their fears somehow. “But when you look around at nature, you don’t just see brutality. You see beauty, don’t you? Look at this snail. Look at the spiral shape of his shell. Mathematically perfect.” He let Warlock study the snail for a moment—the snail stayed in its shell, showing uncommonly good judgement for something less than a pinhead worth of brains—and then they set off to find the snail a new home.

Warlock trotted happily alongside Ezra, singing tunelessly. After a moment, Ezra realized that he was singing, “Snail, snail, whale, whale, skooshy ooshy snail, skooshy ooshy snail,” all mostly on one note.

Under ordinary circumstances, Ezra wouldn’t worry about it. Children were children. The fact that Warlock was rhyming—correctly!—would be more important than the fact that he seemed to be idly thinking about squashing a snail.

But—this was the Antichrist.

What if Ezra let the violent impulse go unchecked, and it burgeoned into more violence?

“No,” Ezra said, “we don’t skoosh the snail.”

Warlock looked stubborn, and sang,  _ “Skooshy ooshy snail, skooshy ooshy skooshy ooshy skooshy ooshy snail,” _ at twice the volume. Which was considerable. That was one thing Ezra hadn’t been prepared for, when dealing with a child. The sheer amount of  _ noise _ they were capable of.

“Warlock, listen to me. We don’t skoosh the snail.”

_ “Skooshy ooshy skooshy ooshy skooshy ooshy—“ _

“Warlock, if you are going to skoosh the snail, I won’t let you see where I find a new home for it.”

Warlock stopped. Ezra turned and saw that Warlock was doing his absolute best lip wobble, his eyes filling up with tears.  _ “You’re mean!” _

“I’m not being mean to you, Warlock. I’m trying to be nice to you and the snail at the same time. But you’re much bigger than the snail, and that means that I have to protect the snail from—“

_ “You’re mean you’re mean you’re mean! I’m telling Nanny!” _

Warlock dashed back towards the house.

“Warlock? Warlock!”

Warlock didn’t turn.

Ezra sighed and put the snail down on the nearest tree. Heavens, but he was making a hash of this.

§

As the Dowlings’ gardener, Ezra lived in the gardener’s cottage on their estate. It was a situation that made him think of amusing rural accents and people who tugged their forelocks—very feudal. A conceit that was somewhat ruined by the Dowlings being American.

He was usually tired by nightfall, if not outright exhausted. Ezra wasn’t cut out to be a gardener, that was the thing. He didn’t have the stamina that other gardeners seemed to effortlessly achieve. He hated and resented the fact that his manicure was permanently ruined, and he hated the strain in his muscles at the end of a long day. He was, blast it all, a bookseller. How had he got himself into this?

He had lined the interior of the cottage with his usual extensive bookshelves. Out of character for a gardener, probably. But then, a lot of things about Ezra were out of character for a gardener, including his accent. The Dowlings didn’t seem to have noticed. It was probably down to Crowley. And the American Secret Service people—who were the staff that Ezra interacted with most often, since they followed Warlock at a discreet distance and occasionally walked through the flower beds—they didn’t seem to care. It still bothered Ezra. He wondered from time to time if he should have tried to fake a Yorkshire accent or some such. Something very rural, something gardener-y. But he didn’t think he could have kept it up.

One thing that the Dowlings were  _ not _ going to find out was the quality of the wine Ezra drank in the evening to unwind. The wine, after all, was a gift from Crowley. He took it out of the wine rack, set two glasses on the coffee table, and poured a generous measure into them both. Picked up the nearest, sank back into his armchair, and closed his eyes with a sigh.

A long moment later, his door opened and closed.

“Long day?”

“More discouraged about Warlock, tonight,” Ezra admitted.

Crowley distributed herself in the chair next to Ezra’s and picked up her glass of wine. She sprawled more when she was alone with Ezra than she ever allowed herself as Nanny Ashtoreth, but she remained firmly female. Perhaps it was difficult to adjust one’s mindset. Ezra hadn’t actually asked Crowley how genders worked for her.

Then again, sometimes Ezra was unsure how genders worked for him. One time in university, to a prospective date, he had opined that things would be far easier if people could simply be orbs of colored light or something equally genderless. The date had pointed out that, humans being humans, they would probably quarrel about which color of light was supposed to top. Which was, come to think of it, remarkably like something Crowley would say. Ezra might, perhaps, have a type.

Now, with the knowledge of his past incarnations sitting uncomfortably in his mind, he wondered if “orb of light” was close to what he once had been. Crowley was definite that Aziraphale had looked very much like Ezra, but he also made it clear that his body was—rather more  _ removable _ than a human’s body, and that there had been a time before he had it. So what had Aziraphale looked like, before he looked like Ezra? Had he looked like anything to human eyes, or was it all on the metaphysical plane?

“I heard about that,” Crowley said. “From Warlock. Mr. Ezra was mean to him because of his singing. What really happened?”

Ezra explained about skooshy ooshy snails.

“Not sure he actually wanted to squash it, honestly,” Crowley remarked. “He’s absorbing your lessons. Got cross at one of the maids for swatting a fly. Although that may have been more because he had an elaborate plan to vacuum up the fly and pipe it through a hose to Australia.”

Ezra smiled faintly. “He does have the best engineering ideas, doesn’t he?”

“Most of them absolutely disastrous,” Crowley said fondly. “I caught him wrapping a cotton ball around that spinny electric toothbrush his mother has.”

“Why?”

“Earwax removing scheme. If it had been Thaddeus’s toothbrush, I  _ might _ have let him stick it in his ear. But I didn’t fancy trying to get all the cotton out. The peanut-up-the-nose incident was bad enough.”

The peanut-up-the-nose incident had resulted in two kicked nurses and a bitten doctor. Crowley had, Ezra recalled, been unreasonably proud. And when Ezra had reminded Crowley that they didn’t actually  _ want _ Warlock to be a little terror, Crowley had opined that all children should know how to kick, scratch, bite, and scream like an air raid siren.  _ It happened to be a doctor this time, _ she had pointed out,  _ but if anyone ever tries to harm him, we want them to come out feeling like they tried to juggle cats. _

Crowley, Ezra had realized early on, liked Warlock.

It surprised Ezra. Then he was ashamed that he had been surprised. Surely he didn’t believe the popular rhetoric about demons being pure evil. Had he?

Crowley had told him a little bit about how other demons managed their temptations. Whispering in people’s heads. Changing what they thought. Slip images of sexual gratification into the mind of a priest, night and day, until he broke his vows, and then let the shame and the things he did to hide the oathbreaking take him the rest of the way down. Just hearing about it made Ezra feel claustrophobic, surrounded. Crowley’s methods, on the other hand—she claimed that they resulted in a larger net gain of souls than the other way around, that her numbers were the best in Hell, but Ezra had also noticed that her way had distinctly more free will involved. And less invasiveness. You had a choice about how to react to a Crowley incident. He wasn’t sure how much choice you had when someone got directly into your head.

But despite noticing tendencies like that, it had still surprised Ezra that Crowley was genuinely good with children. Perhaps not in a way where you’d want to trust her to watch one. Her natural inclination was to enjoy the chaos, not intervene. It had almost certainly taken demonic powers for Nanny Ashtoreth not to get fired after the Three Entire Tubes of Toothpaste incident. But when it came to listening to a child’s engineering schemes, or his stories about robot battles—Nanny Ashtoreth was the nanny that you wanted.

“What do you need, tonight?” Crowley asked Ezra. “Extra sleep?”

Ezra shook his head. “You told me—“

“Wish I hadn’t,” Crowley muttered. “Look,  _ yes, _ it’s true, miracles leave traces, for a bit. And yes, they occasionally check.”

“And, yes,” Ezra said, “they’re more likely to be checking on you now that you’re doing a critical task for Hell.”

The noise Crowley made seemed to say,  _ yes, you happen to be right, but there’s no way I’m going to admit it. _

“A lot of things, you could pass off as part of a scheme. But making my sleep more restful—that’s just healing, isn’t it? You said you once got in trouble for a healing miracle.”

“I just don’t like how  _ tired _ you get,” Crowley said.

“I’ll be fine. Honestly fine. All I need tonight is the wine. And the company.” Ezra smiled at her.

Crowley looked teasing. “I could always say I’m seducing you.”

“You’d have to do some actual seducing, dearest.”

“Sounds like work.”

“Well, if you don’t want to admit that the master tempter couldn’t tempt the poor, vulnerable, helpless human into a little debauchery—“

“I can tempt you,” Crowley said, “into more than a  _ little _ debauchery.”

“I look forward to it,” Ezra said, perhaps a little breathlessly.


	19. Things That Sprout

It was important not to shout at Warlock. It was important not to shout at Warlock. “Oh,  _ Warlock,” _ Ezra sighed instead.

“I found tree poops!” Warlock shouted, delighted.

“They are called dahlia bulbs. They’re supposed to be underground. Did you pull them up by their green bits?  _ Don’t— _ don’t show me.” Warlock had made as if to pull up another bulb. “It hurts the plants,” Ezra said, “to be pulled out of the ground, especially just when they’re sprouting. And it makes a lot of extra work for me, which makes me sad.”

Warlock’s expression went from excited to tragic. “Do you mean you don’t like me any more?”

“What? Of course I like you! Where did that come from, Warlock?”

That might have been too introspective a question for a five-year-old.

“Never mind. Let’s get a trowel, Warlock. You can help me put them back in the ground.”

“I can dig?” Warlock was back to excited.

“You can dig.”

“Can I find a  _ worm?” _

“If you do,” Ezra said, “how will you treat it?”

Warlock rolled his eyes. “I won’t squish it or stretch it or throw it or poke it or put it in Mommy’s adult drink that I can’t have because it’s for adults.”

“Very good.”

“But,” Warlock said, pursuing a thought, “worms stretch  _ themselves.” _ He lay down in the destroyed flower bed and stretched to his full length, then curled up his knees and hunched his shoulders. “Stretch out, skwunch up. Stretch out, skwunch up. I can’t go through the dirt that way because I’m a person.”

“That’s right,” Ezra agreed cautiously.

Warlock scrambled to his feet. “So maybe if  _ I _ stretch a worm, it’ll shoot through the air.  _ Spweee-ong!” _ The motion Warlock made was almost certainly based on shooting an elastic band. Ezra had never shot elastic bands as a child—he wouldn’t have dared—but he had a strong suspicion about who had taught Warlock that particular trick,  _ dammit Crowley. _

“You can’t shoot worms like that,” Ezra said. “You’d just hurt them. If someone stretched you too far, it would hurt you, too. And worms are living things—“

“Just like me,” Warlock finished, with a put-upon sigh. “If we  _ could _ shoot worms,” he reflected, “then worms could shoot  _ themselves, _ and they could pop out of the ground  _ fweeee-blooosh _ and snipe the robins right out of the air,  _ pow pow pow pow pow! _ And then the robins wouldn’t eat the worms.”

“What would the robins eat?” Ezra asked, amused. “And where did you find out about sniping?”

“The robins could eat my salad.”

“I think perhaps you ought to eat your own salad. You want to grow up big and strong, don’t you?”

“They put too much sour stuff on it.”

“Have you told someone?”

“Nobody listens,” Warlock said.

“I bet Nanny would listen,” Ezra said, perhaps a little grimly. For heaven’s sake, foregoing the vinaigrette might be an  _ easy _ way to get vegetables into the child; what parent wouldn’t jump at that opportunity? “But let’s worry about that later. For now, we have to dig the dahlias back in.”

§

They spent the afternoon companionably, even if Warlock had minimal patience for the task of getting the sprouting dahlias back in and was just as likely to dig up another bulb. The lesson, Ezra reminded himself, was the important bit. The lesson about taking responsibility, about fixing what you destroyed.

It wasn’t until Ezra spotted Crowley, in her Nanny Ashtoreth persona, making her way through the garden in the increasingly golden evening light, that Ezra realized. Warlock currently looked more like a dirt monster than a five-year-old child. (Unless the two concepts were synonymous. Ezra sometimes wondered.)

Ezra saw the realization cross Nanny’s face as she came up to them, and he tried to telegraph apology. The Dowlings—the Dowlings were a problem. Harriet less so, she at least  _ tried, _ but she didn’t take well to the more chaotic, messy elements of childhood. And Thaddeus was dreadful. Neither of them would take it well if Warlock the Mud Monster appeared for dinner.

“Warlock,” Nanny said, “you need a bath.”

_ “I don’t want a bath!” _

“I’ll put bubbles in it.”

_ “I don’t want a bath!” _

“Or, alternately,” Nanny offered, “I could make it look like the acid pools of Gehenna and you could punish your action figures in it.”

To Ezra’s dismay, Warlock seemed to find it an arresting notion. “Will you do the screaming?”

“I will,” Nanny said, “absolutely do the screaming.”

“Okay!” Warlock bolted toward the mansion.

“Screaming?” Ezra asked quietly as Crowley looked after him.

“Sometimes I make his action figures scream when he pretends to torment them.”

“Is that wise? We don’t want Warlock to—“

_ “Don’t, _ Ezra. Don’t second-guess me. I don’t have a choice. If it wasn’t this particular brand of evil, it would be something else.” Nanny turned and made her way across the green, looking nothing like Crowley as she walked.

§

“I’m sorry,” Ezra said, later that night, at his cottage.

“Sorry about what? You’re right. I  _ am _ undoing what you’re trying to accomplish.” Crowley took a larger swallow of Scotch than Ezra would have dared.

It was, perhaps, a bad sign that this was a Scotch night rather than a wine one. Although to be fair, Crowley could put away startling quantities of either.

“But I know you don’t have a choice in it. It isn’t fair for me to give you grief for it.” Ezra hesitated. “Does it—hurt? The work order.”

“Satan, I wish it did.” Crowley caught Ezra’s shocked look. “You know where you’re at with pain. Pain hurts. It sucks. It’s horrible. It doesn’t try to get into your head and make you think it  _ isn’t _ horrible. With pain, you don’t find yourself constantly questioning whether an idea came from you or came from somewhere else. You don’t audit your own thoughts.”

“That’s an obscene thing to do to anyone,” Ezra said. He didn’t voice the rest of his thought: that it was somehow even more obscene to do to the Demon of Free Will. “I wish I could help. I wish I could get rid of it for you.” He looked away. “Maybe if I were Aziraphale, I could. I’m sorry.”

“He couldn’t,” Crowley said. “I signed the paper voluntarily. In theory. In practice, I signed the paper under threat of Hastur, but that sort of thing doesn’t matter so much in magic.”

Ezra nodded. “I still think,” he said, “that Aziraphale would be more help to you than I am. Six thousand years, that has to make a person a bit wise, you would think.”

“Not really. Mostly, it gives you a huge number of memories to get lost in. Every face you see looks a little familiar, because at one time or another you knew someone who looked a bit like that.” Crowley took another swallow of Scotch. “Besides. I’m not sure whether he’d do this with me.”

“Why on Earth wouldn’t he?”

“Because most of the time, Aziraphale needs talking around and tempting before he breaks the rules. I sometimes wonder—“ Crowley looked at his drink. “I sometimes wonder if something happened to him, after he gave away the flaming sword. Because when I met him later, he was a lot more cautious. Even the glow seemed a little—muted, somehow, as if there was some basic difference in his personality. It took me more than a century to talk him into the Arrangement. He’d come around eventually, on something like this. But I don’t know if  _ eventually _ would be fast enough.”

The word  _ arrangement, _ Ezra had belatedly realized, had a considerably stronger weight of meaning for Crowley than it did for everyone else. He hadn’t understood, back when Crowley had described their relationship as an arrangement, that that was Crowley for  _ this is all I can have of you, so I will take it and hold on as hard as I can. _

Ezra’s feelings about Aziraphale were only getting more complicated as time went on. On the one hand, he was curious. On another, definitely not final hand, he was painfully envious. The person that Crowley had really fallen for, his real equal, the person Ezra was a shadow and a stand-in for—

And on a mysteriously appearing third hand, he found himself hoping, more and more, privately and guiltily, that he never became Aziraphale again. Because Crowley had a lot to say about Aziraphale, and sometimes it was good, and sometimes Crowley didn’t seem to realize it cast the angel in a bad light, but he was always firm on one detail. Aziraphale hadn’t loved Crowley.

Ezra couldn’t imagine being someone who didn’t love Crowley. He didn’t want to be someone who didn’t love Crowley. If Aziraphale didn’t love Crowley, then Aziraphale fundamentally  _ wasn’t Ezra, _ and the idea of his body and life and identity being taken over by someone who  _ wasn’t him _ on such a basic level—

His feelings about that, he imagined, were much the same as Crowley’s feelings about the work order.

He couldn’t say anything like that to Crowley.

“How was your evening with Warlock?” he asked instead.

Crowley smiled suddenly. “Think I might have accidentally won a point against Hell.”

“Really? What?”

“Hell doesn’t have robots. Warlock thinks that if the world is going to end, it should have a lot of robots, all of which make sound effects. Did you know that ‘pew’ can be a verb? Means ‘to shoot with a laser.’ As in, ‘then the big robot pewed Superman.’”

Ezra thought about it. “I was going to say,” he said, “that if Warlock were an ordinary child, I wouldn’t worry about any of this—that a somewhat dark imagination and an interest in destruction is completely normal. But I’m not sure what  _ is _ normal, when it comes right down to it.  _ I _ certainly wasn’t.”

“You weren’t?”

“Mm. All the other boys were interested in football and worms and tormenting girls. I was interested in reading the encyclopedia. Not exactly what my parents wanted.” He was quiet for a moment. “Although I must admit, I’m still uncertain what my father wanted. Someone who didn’t make any trouble for him, but someone who wasn’t a prig. Someone who did well in school, but not someone who buried himself in his academics. All I was ever sure of was that whatever he wanted out of a child, I wasn’t it.”

“Then he was a fucking wanker,” Crowley said fiercely.

“Not really. He was never  _ cruel. _ Just—deeply disappointed.” Ezra sighed. “I was trying to distract you by talking about Warlock. I didn’t mean to bring up my own troubles. Especially since they’re very old troubles and don’t really matter anymore.”

“It matters.”

“Not really. But thank you all the same.”

Crowley poured himself some more Scotch. “Screw this. What we need is to get away from this place and have some fun. When was the last time we saw a movie?”

“It’s almost ten at night.”

“Doesn’t have to stop us. I can make sure you’re well-rested by the morning. Have I shown you  _ Dark City _ yet? Because it’s sort of like  _ The Matrix,  _ only without two disappointing sequels and Keanu Reeves.”

“You haven’t,” Ezra said. There was no point in pointing out that the movie wasn’t showing anyplace in London. Once Crowley had made up his mind, it would be.


	20. Summers In Tadfield

Crowley later nicknamed the Tadfield kids Mucky, Pocket Protector, Down to Fight, and Trouble. In Ezra’s opinion, they were the best thing to happen to Warlock since Ezra had started working for the Dowlings.

They arrived one afternoon at Ezra’s cottage. Warlock had come over after having been tipped off to Ezra’s location by Nanny, and the two of them were attempting to hang a swing in the oak tree, an operation made more difficult by the fact that Ezra didn’t have a ladder, which meant that the only way to get the rope over the branches was to throw it. Ezra was not good at throwing it.

He was intent enough on his task that he didn’t notice the two of them had visitors until he noticed that Warlock had abruptly gone silent. “Hi,” an unfamiliar child’s voice said from behind him. “Who’re you?”

Ezra turned around and found that the question had been directed at Warlock. “I’m Warlock Dowling,” Warlock said. “I’m the ambassador’s son. Who’re  _ you?” _

“I’m Adam. Is that a swing?”

Adam had three other children flanking him. The girl was carrying a plastic sword. The stickier of the two boys had a paper crown, clearly punched out of some activity book or other. It was already getting grubby.

“Gonna be,” Warlock said. And then, with a certain reluctance, “You want to have a go on it when it’s up? Only it’s not going to be up for a while because Mr. Ezra can’t throw.”

Adam eyed the project speculatively. “I bet I can get up that tree,” he offered, “if Mr. Ezra gives me a boost.”

Ten minutes later, the swing was in place. The cleanest of the boys had been solidly clocked in the head by the girl’s foot when the Tadfield Gang had the bright idea of pushing from both sides. While she and the other two messed around on the swing, Warlock picked up a stick to try sword-fighting with Adam.

“You know,” Ezra said, keen to stave off disaster, “when you fence, you’re supposed to go for the body. Not the limbs,  _ never _ the eyes or face.”

“How did pirates get their hands cut off, then?” Adam challenged.

“That was a different kind of sword-fighting.”

“I want to learn pirate sword-fighting.”

“Well, you can’t stand with your legs so close together. Put one back a bit. Like that. You see,” Ezra said, “when I give Warlock a little shove—like this—and he has his feet together, he has to move. But you, standing like that—you feel how steady you are? One of the keys to fighting is making sure they can’t move you unless you want to be moved.”

Both boys, Ezra realized suddenly, were riveted. “How do you know that?” Warlock challenged.

Ezra groped for a memory. Found none.

“I think I must have picked it up reading,” he offered weakly. “It’s amazing what you can learn from books.”

“Books are lame,” Warlock said.

Which was rather rich, coming from the boy who had come home after school for a month and insisted that Ezra read him “Where the Wild Things Are.” Warlock had commissioned a wolf suit from Nanny, who probably hadn’t done a bit of sewing the mundane way, and the resulting mayhem had left Warlock grounded inside for two weeks—which Ezra thought was probably not age-appropriate, considering that seven-year-old Warlock probably felt like the punishment lasted for decades. Ezra was starting to agee with Crowley: if Warlock had dastardly designs on Thaddeus’s toothbrush, Ezra was fully prepared to permit them.

“Books are like mind-reading,” Ezra said. “When you read a book, you find out what someone else thought about the world, miles and years away from you. How much closer to a superpower can you get?”

“Optic blasts,” Warlock suggested.

“Have you ever seen an optic blast in real life?”

“No, but Hellspawn can do them. Hellspawn,” Warlock added to Adam, “is half demon and he has big red wings and a morningstar. I’ll show you my comic books. A morningstar is like a spiked ball so that you can split people’s heads open. And he can do optic blasts and teleport and fly and—“

“You can’t split someone’s head open with a ball,” Adam protested. “You’d need an axe. I think Hellspawn is a stupid comic book.”

It took Ezra some doing to pull a furious Warlock off Adam. “Adam,” Ezra said, holding Warlock at a safe distance from the boy, “I think you should apologize. Warlock wrote the Hellspawn comics  _ himself. _ It isn’t nice to call someone else’s work stupid.”

Adam looked suddenly fascinated. “You write comic books?”

_ “Yes, and they are not stupid!” _

“Will you show me?”

_ “No! Because you’re stupid!” _

“Warlock,” Ezra protested, “that’s not nice. You need to be good to the people around you, remember? Adam is sorry.”

“Yeah,” Adam agreed. “I didn’t think I’d ever  _ meet _ someone who wrote comic books. I thought they were all, you know, from America.”

“And Adam has a point. Morningstars don’t actually cut people so much as—as smash them like eggs.”

Both boys looked at him as if he’d worked a miracle.  _ “Cool,” _ Adam breathed.

“Not cool,” Ezra protested. “Very, very violent.” But he had lost them.

By the end of the afternoon, Ezra had shown all of the children how to brace themselves, improvised a toy morningstar by wrapping a ball of rags around a stick, broken up several fights, and learned what the children wanted to be called, if not their actual names. (Brian had threatened to tell Pepper’s name, but got as far as  _ Pippin Ga— _ before Pepper bit him. Ezra had applied a plaster, despite no blood being drawn, having learned from Warlock that plasters could cure all ailments, sometimes even if they were put on an entirely different part of the body.) Everyone except Wensley had taken some bruising hits, and Wensley had fallen off the swing.

And Warlock had  _ friends. _

That was the thing Ezra was celebrating, in his private thoughts, when Nanny came to pick Warlock up for dinner. Warlock had friends. Warlock had plenty of play dates, of course, with other rich people’s children around London, but Ezra wasn’t sure they counted as friends. Those weren’t connections that Warlock had made himself. Half the time, as Crowley had pointed out, they were connections that either Harriet or Thaddeus wanted to cultivate, and the children weren’t the same age at all.

Warlock raced up to Nanny as soon as she came into the yard. “Nanny!”

Nanny, possibly using miracles to assist herself, grabbed Warlock and tucked him bodily under her arm. “Fresh meat! I’m taking this one to my larder to devour,” she informed Ezra cheerfully. “You can eat the rest of them.”

Warlock giggled. “Nanny! I’m not food!”

“You look like food. Fresh child meat, scrumptious. Marinade you in a red wine sauce.”

“I’m Warlock!”

“Oh, you’re  _ Warlock! _ Sorry, my mistake. I thought you were one of these other snacks.” Nanny nodded to the other children and put Warlock down.

“Who’re you?” Adam challenged.

“She’s my nanny,” Warlock explained. “She’s cool.”

“People don’t have nannies anymore,  _ actually.” _ That was Wensley. “They had them back when everybody had chimneysweeps, but they don’t anymore.”

Warlock looked stubborn. “Well,  _ I  _ have a nanny.”

“Can you do magic?” Adam asked Nanny.

“Of course I can. What’ll you give me for it? Your soul?” Adam looked like he was considering it, and Nanny added, “Trick question. You never, ever promise your soul to anyone, especially not a magical creature. It’s worse than compound interest. Come along, Warlock. It’s time for your supper.”

Warlock nodded, looking resigned. “Back here tomorrow?” he asked Adam.

“Sure, if you want.”

§

“And I certainly don’t think any of them got any moral lessons out of the whole thing,” Ezra said to Crowley, “but it was so good to see Warlock just having  _ fun. _ And I imagine it will be good for him to experience—well, to experience life with normal children. Children who don’t get a new plasma TV when they smash their old one with a cricket bat.” One of Warlock’s play dates had done just that earlier that year. “I know children can be mean-spirited and unpleasant whatever walk of life they’re from, but honestly these children seemed—well,  _ nice. _ Boys playing with a girl, too, that implies they wouldn’t play some of the cruel tricks that boys did when I was—well. At any rate—”

“What sort of tricks?” Crowley asked.

“It was decades ago, dearest, you can’t track them down. I don’t even remember the names.”

“I wasn’t going to!” Crowley protested, perhaps a touch unconvincingly. “I just want to know.”

Ezra looked away. “Well. When I was about Warlock’s age, I remember that a few older boys talked me into the idea that I had to use the girl’s restroom because my name ended in A. It seemed very logical at the time—Lydia, Christina, Anna, all of them using that restroom, and children are vague enough about gender anyway.” Or Ezra had been, anyway. “So I went in, and the girls threw six kinds of fit and went to the headmaster, and I was disciplined and on my teacher’s bad side for what felt like the rest of the year. I suppose I was tremendously gullible as a child.”

Crowley shook her head. “It goes back further than that. Not gullibility exactly, but a sort of—blindness. Aziraphale had no idea what sarcasm was, when I first met him, and it took him a very long time to learn. And even after, he kept on believing things that  _ I _ could see were blatant bullshit. Heaven having the best interest of humanity at heart, that sort of thing.”

Ezra was quiet for a moment. Very early in the Mad Plan, he had asked Crowley why they couldn’t petition Heaven for help. Surely, in the name of stopping the actual Apocalypse . . . But Crowley had been vehemently opposed, and  _ not _ just because getting an angel involved might get her painfully smote.  _ Heaven is just as keen for the war as Hell is, _ Ezra remembered her saying.  _ Heaven is not a potential ally. Never forget that. _

Ezra had struggled a little with whether he completely believed it, finally coming to the conclusion that  _ Crowley _ completely believed it and that would have to be good enough to be getting on with.

“You’re right,” Crowley said. “Warlock needs friends. And being around normal kids will do him some good. Learning that you don’t actually  _ have _ to have a multi-feature action figure to have fun.” She grimaced. “Honestly, I’m not sure which side it serves, that he’s obsessed with  _ stuff. _ Normally, well, greed is on the deadly list for a reason. But  _ in this particular case, _ the fact that Warlock cares about Earth things might make him decide to keep the Earth around.  _ I’m _ certainly not going to point out that if he comes into his power, he can imagine up an Xbox as easily as breathing.”

“I forget about it,” Ezra admitted. “It takes real effort to remember, sometimes, that he’s not a human child and he’ll have cosmic-level powers.”

“I know what you mean.”

“He’s really a lovely child. If you don’t mind the bloodthirst. But I suppose that isn’t uncommon in children. Adam seemed just as keen to learn about swords and morningstars.” Ezra hesitated. “Did one of my human incarnations—did one of them learn about fighting, somewhere? Only I found myself telling the children how to plant their feet when they’re fighting, and unless I picked that up from a book . . .”

“I’m reasonably sure Antoine learned some sword combat in the École Militaire,” Crowley said. “I know they taught it back then. But I think—I think that might be Aziraphale. Aziraphale can  _ fight. _ He spent some time as a knight, and it usually took him only seconds to have the other knight on the ground, with a sword to his throat, negotiating terms.”

Ezra thought,  _ get out of my head, you not-loving-Crowley bastard. _ But he couldn’t say that. Couldn’t ever say that.

Instead, he said, “Dearest, I’m rather tired. I know you might have been hoping for something more vigorous, but would you mind just being on me, tonight?”

“I never mind,” Crowley said.

And they retired to the bedroom. Ezra was still unsure why he found it so very soothing to have a giant snake rest on top of him—something about the pressure, the weight, the closeness of the being he loved. Crowley thought it was a massive failure of survival instinct— _ you know I can be a constrictor if I want, right?— _ but she never turned down an opportunity to cuddle. Not anymore. Any affection Ezra gave her, she drank as if she were starving.

It was safe to say that Ezra wasn’t very happy with Aziraphale, for leaving Crowley starving.


	21. Lessons

“Did you go to college?” Warlock asked.

Ezra had to be cautious here. The fewer lies he told, the fewer lies he would have to remember. “I went to university, but I didn’t learn gardening there. For that, I got an apprenticeship. Why do you ask?”

“Dad said you were probably a high school dropout.”

_ Thaddeus. _ Thaddeus could go—Thaddeus could go—Ezra wasn’t able to come up with somewhere sufficiently uncomfortable and humbling for Thaddeus to go to. “Did he, now.”

“Yeah. He said you put on a lot of airs for one, but you wouldn’t be digging in the dirt all day if you had any education.” Warlock said it with the air of someone who was a little uncertain what any of that meant, but was doing his best to repeat it faithfully. With absolutely no idea why someone might get angry at it, so Ezra did his best not to.

“Well, fathers aren’t always right about everything.” How to phrase the hard lessons? “The thing about parents, Warlock, is that they’re people. And people are always imperfect. Your father—well, he has his failings, and his prejudices, and he’ll likely spend his whole life working on them.” And that was the  _ very, very optimistic _ appraisal. More likely, he’d spend his whole life not working on them, and not having to worry about it because he had money.

“Prejudice is bad,” Warlock said. “My dad doesn’t have any. I don’t think anyone has any anymore, because of Martin Luther King.”

“The subject,” Ezra said, “is considerably more complicated than that. Any time you hear someone’s accent and guess things about them—other than simply where they’re from—you’re doing prejudice, just a little. It doesn’t make you bad,” he added hastily, as Warlock looked upset, “it’s just something to—to watch out for.”

He wondered, again, if he should have affected an accent. Teach the child that people who don’t sound like they had money still have working brains and loving hearts? It might have been better that way. Too late now.

“At any rate,” Ezra went on, “I’m not sure why it would  _ matter _ if I never finished school. I’d be worthy of the very same respect as any other person.”

§

It was, Crowley reflected, an unexpected problem in becoming a child’s caretaker—the very strong impulse to use miracles to steady him as he tried his bike with two wheels for the first time. Humans used the things all the time with no miracles. It had to be possible.

It was just, he was  _ wobbling _ so badly.

Warlock looked back at her.

“I think you’re getting the hang of it,” Crowley lied. “Here, have another go.”

“I don’t know why I  _ should _ ride a bike,” Warlock complained. “I’m gonna get a big demonic horse with flames for its mane and tail.”

“Horses,” Crowley said, “are dreadful. Honestly, the car is the best thing humans ever invented.”

“Then I’ll get a big demonic car and I’ll paint flames on the side and I’ll drive it at ten thousand miles an hour and it’ll go so fast it’ll look  _ invisible. _ And driving ten thousand miles an hour will turn me invisible, and I won’t become visible again until I yell . . .” His imagination had run ahead of his words, apparently, because he didn’t seem to know what he would yell. “Until I yell, ‘You can see me!’” Warlock finished rather unoriginally.

“There are easier ways to turn invisible,” Crowley said. “The easiest one is to carry a clipboard.”

Warlock blinked at her. “Really?”

“Oh, yes. Clipboard and official jacket and you can get in almost anywhere. And where that doesn’t work, a waiter’s tuxedo and a tray of cocktails will.”

“I bet it doesn’t work really,” Warlock said.

“I bet you it does.”

“I bet you can’t sneak up on my dad at the Prime Minister’s party, even if you  _ do _ wear a tuxedo.”

“You do, do you?” Crowley regarded him.  _ “How much _ do you bet me?”

“Two hundred dollars?”

“If money doesn’t mean anything to you, why should it mean anything to me? No. You smuggle me your desserts for a week,  _ and _ you learn to ride on two wheels. Deal?”

“Deal!” Warlock said.

“And the lesson of the day is, always be careful when you make deals.”

§

The next day, Crowley handed Warlock a watch—not as full of extra features as the one she wore when she wasn’t being Nanny, but it had more than enough—and gave him her sweetest smile. “I do love a strawberry tart. Get lots.”

Warlock’s face was a caricature of dismay.

“Out of curiosity,” Crowley said idly, “how much education do you think a waiter has?”

“Maybe a diploma?” hazarded Warlock, who wasn’t entirely clear on higher education yet, or what the various terms meant. It didn’t help, of course, that his parents were American, and kept contextualizing things in American terms, “high school” and so forth.

“Not even that. Show up, be willing to work, have a good memory, stay on your feet, and keep smiling even when people are being incredibly rude to you. That’s all a waiter needs to do.” Crowley tapped the watch. “But a waiter—a fake waiter, anyway—is capable of sneaking up on your father and stealing from him. Today it was a watch, tomorrow it could be state secrets. It works—it’ll work every time—because he doesn’t think waiters are worthy of notice. And  _ that _ is why you don’t underestimate people you think you outrank.”

§

“Honestly,” Crowley told Ezra, “I didn’t even have to cheat much. Just went male for a bit. Thaddeus is as thick as he is obnoxious.”

“You didn’t have to,” Ezra said.

“I wanted to. It was a worthwhile lesson. Something I  _ wanted _ to teach.” Something she was sure was her choice. Something she didn’t have to scrutinize from all angles to make sure it was  _ hers. _

“Still. It feels like you’re trying to defend me from Thaddeus. And I don’t need defending from Thaddeus—well, I suppose I  _ do, _ I need to make sure he doesn’t fire me, but words won’t hurt me.”

“They could if Warlock decides you’re not worth visiting. I can keep Thaddeus and Harriet from noticing virtually anything. Including, by the way, the question of whether you’re straight, because they’ve both wondered. I can’t do a thing to Warlock’s mind. It’s in the work order. No choice.” Crowley thought she hissed a little bit on the last  _ c _ in  _ choice. _

“You have a point.” Ezra took a sip of his cocoa. “I do worry that at some point, Warlock is going to decide that I’m not cool. He’s of an age to start worrying about cool, I think.”

“Yeah.” Crowley wrapped her hands around her own mug of hot cocoa. It was icy cold outside, and windy. Spring couldn’t make up its mind whether it wanted to be spring or not. Just a few days ago, it had been warm enough to go to the park with a bicycle, and now it was pretending to be winter again. Ridiculous weather.

Something unwelcome occurred to Crowley. “Ezra?”

“What is it?’

“Does it bother you that I’m a woman so much of the time now?”

Ezra blinked. “Why should it?”

“Because you’re gay, what else? I just realized, I come over here and I don’t change—but I changed to play a stupid trick on Thaddeus Dowling—that’s got to be . . .” Crowley waved the mug of cocoa inarticulately.

“I did generally identify as gay before I met you,” Ezra acknowledged.

It was more than just identifying. He radiated it on all possible frequencies, Crowley thought. “Yeah. Yeah. I should—“

He concentrated and made the change. He would have to remember to change  _ back _ before anyone saw him. That was why he usually stayed as he was when he visited Ezra—there was that nagging fear of forgetting.

“Darling—“ Ezra put his hand on Crowley’s arm.

Crowley made an unspellable sound. He still wasn’t  _ used _ to endearments, bless it. Even the ever-present  _ my dear _ had startled him the first time it came out of Ezra’s mouth, but over time, other words had joined it—words like  _ dearest _ and  _ darling _ and  _ my love— _ and sometimes it still shocked Crowley to hear them.

“I said that was how I  _ used _ to identify. At the moment, I identify as  _ attracted to Crowleys. _ My own special micro-orientation. It doesn’t matter what you choose to be, it just matters that it’s  _ you.”  _ He stroked Crowley’s cheek. “Although I would like seeing you in scales someday soon. We haven’t done that in a while.”

Crowley breathed out and manifested some scales right underneath Ezra’s hand. Hands felt so different on scales and on skin, and Ezra wasn’t only willing to explore the possibilities of Crowley's demon form, he was  _ eager. _ “I don’t know how I got so lucky,” he said, “except that it definitely wasn’t for good behavior.”


	22. Time Passes

In Tadfield, for whatever reason, it rarely rained during the day. But when an afternoon rain shower  _ did _ drive Adam and Warlock inside, it was to pursue their shared enjoyment for comic books. By attempting to make one. Ezra watched the process with a mixture of amusement and confusion.

“So the mecha-hydra has twelve heads,” Warlock said, “and each of the heads are televisions, and they broadcast the Omicron Signal, which makes humans into its mind-controlled zombie slaves, and they—no, it’s Omicron, not Omnicron, it doesn’t have an N there.”

“Omnicron sounds cooler,” Adam protested.

“Yeah, but it’s a real letter. From Greece. And the hydra is from Greece, so it needs a Greek letter. It’s basically like an O, but cool.”

“Okay,” Adam said, “so, mind controlled zombie slaves. Should they have torches?”

“Well, they’re headed for the TV tower, so they can broadcast out into space and tell the Giga-Gorgonite that Earth is ripe for conquest. So, what would you use to break into the TV tower? An axe?”

“Crowbar,” Adam suggested.

“What’s a crowbar?”

“Sort of an iron stick thingy. Anyway, Giga-Gorgonite is a dumb name. It should be Mega-Gorgonite.”

“Giga is bigger than Mega,” Warlock protested. “It’s Latin.”

“How do you know Greek and Latin and don’t know what a crowbar is?”

“Nanny.”

“Oh, that makes sense. Anyway—maybe  _ Ultra- _ Gorgonite? Anyway, Vincent Blood is going to be waiting at the TV tower—“

“You can’t put Vincent Blood in everything,” Warlock protested.

“He’s a vampire cowboy detective, he can pass between dimensions!”

“Duh, of course he can, but you still can’t put him . . .”

§

“Three more years,” Crowley said to Ezra.

They had watched a movie in Ezra’s cottage, this time. Going out had its appeal, but being able to lean into each other—that was more important, tonight.

“We’ll manage it,” Ezra said, with somewhat more confidence than he felt. “Warlock is  _ normal, _ Crowley. Really normal. A brat sometimes, a sweetheart other times. He’s just—“

“Human,” Crowley completed.

“Exactly.”

“I don’t like it. There’s something weird going on.”

“You told me yourself,” Ezra reminded him, “he would be a perfectly normal boy, right up until the moment when he isn’t.” He paused. “He comes into his power when he’s eleven, right?”

“Eleventh birthday,” Crowley said. “If we did our job right, he’ll never come into his power. Never know he’s anything other than human. If we didn’t—“

“We don’t have to think about that tonight.” Despite the fact that Ezra had slowly been feeling the tension ratchet up, day by day, like a spring being wound. Three more years.

It was like a cancer diagnosis.

What would Crowley be feeling? Ezra, at least, had grown up with the idea that he was going to die someday. But death wasn’t in Crowley’s nature. What would the cancer diagnosis be doing to him? “Are you okay?”

“No, of course I’m bloody not  _ okay!” _ Crowley took a deep breath, lowered his voice, and admitted in a mutter, “I need to kill a plant.”

Ezra rubbed his back in a circle. “We can get you a houseplant.”

“It doesn’t work like that. I don’t just take a random plant and kill it, I have to make sure it knows what’s expected of it. What it stands to lose. Helps if there are several of them, so I can pick the one with the most flaws.”

Ezra winced internally. He wondered, sometimes, how long Crowley would continue to tolerate his flaws. Continue to tolerate all the ways he wasn’t an angel.

“Just remember,” he said instead, “the more normal Warlock is, the better it’s working. I’m cancelling you out.” He leaned his head on Crowley’s shoulder. “I wasn’t sure whether I could,” he admitted. “You’ve been around so much longer than I have. You know so many more tricks. I’ve never won a game of chess against you. I wasn’t sure I could make this one a draw.”

“You’ve won any number of games of chess against me,” Crowley said. “Most of how I get you is remembering all the games I lost against Aziraphale. Besides, this isn’t chess. It’s emotional stuff. Human stuff. You’re better at it.”

“I doubt it,” Ezra said. “Enough of this. Another movie?”

Crowley clicked his fingers rather than get up, and the television flickered back on. “What about  _ The Princess Bride?” _

They had watched it several times before. They would probably watch it several times again.

In the time they had left.

§

“Hi, Mr. Ezra!”

“Hello, Warlock!” Ezra said, straightening and turning. And then realizing, with surprise, that there was another boy with Warlock. “Who’s this?”

“This is Brett. He’s my friend.”

“Delighted to meet you, Brett. This part of the grounds isn’t very exciting for children your age, I’m afraid, but there’s—“

“You don’t sound like a gardener,” Brett interrupted. English accent. Someone who would notice.

“Not everyone sounds like what they are,” Ezra said, and then added, “I enjoy flowers.” It was  _ somewhat _ true. He enjoyed the look of the finished thing. He just happened to hate the constant drain on his energy and the size of the Dowling estate. “As I was saying, there’s a bit over near my cottage where I hung up a swing.” With rather less fuss than the similar swing at the cottage in Tadfield, because here, at least, he had a ladder.

“I’m not interested in a stupid  _ swing,” _ Brett said. “Come on, let’s get on the Xbox.”

Warlock’s facial journey said that he didn’t want to get on the Xbox. That he had brought Brett out here for a reason, that he wanted Brett to appreciate something, and that he didn’t think the swing was stupid.

It also said that he desperately worried about looking uncool in front of Brett.

He followed the other boy inside, shoulders slumping.

Ezra looked after him worriedly. Two years to go. Two years to go, and he was losing influence because of Warlock’s friends. Two years to go, and if Warlock didn’t still believe that bits of the world were cool . . .

It didn’t bear thinking about. So Ezra tried not to.

§

“Warlock told me yesterday that he didn’t have to listen to me,” Crowley said one day, “because he’s ten and ten year olds don’t have nannies and nannies aren’t cool.”

“That’s good, isn’t it?” They were having a weekend walk in the park. Ezra had found that he could observe more things about a park now that he knew the ins and outs of gardening. A lot of work went into a park. He had to resist the urge to tell everyone to stay off the grass.

Crowley looked away. “Yeah. Yeah, that’s good.”

“So what’s the matter?”

Crowley hesitated for a minute. Then he said, “Nothing. Nothing. I just don’t want to lose influence with the Antichrist. If he actually becomes the Antichrist.”

Ezra turned this over in his head. He thought there was a certain amount of  _ I didn’t expect to care what Warlock thought of me, _ mixed with  _ I definitely didn’t expect to care about Warlock, _ mixed with the steady background of Armageddon-panic and  _ oh God Ezra’s going to die. _ “Were you planning on trying to get him to keep me alive? If he destroys the world?”

“It was Plan E or F,” Crowley admitted. “Thing is—thing is, it’s not as if Warlock will actually be in charge of anything administrative, you understand? He’s somewhere between a figurehead and a tactical nuke. Set him off, everything goes blooey, all those souls pouring into Hell boost our power and we hope like Heaven we get more than they do, and then we see how much of the Heavenly Host he can destroy singlehanded—the point is, I’m not sure he’s going to be in charge of who survives. He’s royalty, but he can be overruled—by his father, if no-one else. He’ll probably  _ think _ he can keep his favorite humans alive and let the rest of the world burn. Not sure it’ll work out like that.”

Ezra looked up at a Japanese maple tree and wondered if it were a grafting job. He couldn’t tell from here. “There’s also the question,” he said carefully, “of whether I want to survive Armageddon.”

Crowley’s jaw worked. He didn’t say anything.

“I want to be with you. I want to survive with you. I don’t want to know what the end of the world would do to me. Even if there are relatively few humans in my life, I can’t think what it would be to suddenly lose them all. There is no comparison point for trauma like that. I think it would probably destroy me, even if I lived.”

Crowley was silent.

“Never mind. Morbid train of thought. Let’s just concentrate on how we’ll get Warlock through this next year without getting ‘set off,’ as you put it.”

“If he’ll let us,” Crowley said.

§

“No game today?” Ezra asked Warlock. These days, when Warlock went outside, his game system usually came with him.

“Nah.”

“Is there a problem with it?”

“Brett says that  _ Cuphead _ is stupid and everyone has already played it on the XBox One, and I was stupid for getting it on the Switch.”

Ezra thought about what he had seen looking over Warlock’s shoulder. “That would be the one with the little cartoon mugs with feet?”

“Yeah.”

Warlock was, clearly, in a foul mood. Ezra wasn’t sure what he could do about it. “What do you think?”

“It’s just a dumb game,” Warlock muttered. “It doesn’t matter.”

“If you say so. But  _ something’s _ bothering you. That frown is about to wither my lilacs.”

“You are so incredibly lame,” Warlock told him.

“You can help me with the fertilizer, if you like. I have an extra pair of gloves.” Ezra, in fact, kept extra pairs of gloves in Warlock’s size, and had done for a while.

“It’s your job,” Warlock said. “You go do it.”

“Warlock, I  _ know _ you aren’t this rude, especially to your friends, unless you’re absolutely miserable. Tell me what’s going on.”

“You’re not my friend! You’re just my Dad’s stupid old gardener! Elise says that if she hung out with one of the help the way I hung out with you, her Dad would fire him!”

“Oh, my dear child. Is that it? Your father isn’t going to fire me.”

“He would! He totally would!  _ He’s _ the one who wouldn’t let me get  _ Cuphead _ for the Xbox One, because it had the Devil in it, only I got it with my own money on the Switch because I was interested in the art, except I’m not anymore because art is  _ stupid, _ it’s all stupid and I can’t make it come out right, and it’s completely lame anyway, my Dad says art is for ‘the limp-wristed set,’ and I don’t even know what that  _ means, _ but I’ve been trying to draw the characters from  _ Cuphead _ and he found it and the only reason I didn’t get in trouble was that he didn’t know where the designs came from, and he still took the notebook away! I hate him! I hate everyone!”

Ezra picked his way carefully through this maze. “Your father. Wouldn’t buy you a game. Because it had the Devil in it.”

Warlock scrunched his shoulders up around his ears. “Yeah, he thinks it’s a bad influence or something. And he’s thinking of taking us back to the States and running for office, and his base would be really upset about the Satan stuff.”

Ezra tried to deal with the various staggering layers of irony in the situation. He didn’t manage it. It felt, he imagined, rather as if his brain had blown a fuse. He decided it might be wise to concentrate on some other part of the problem. “What do you mean when you say you couldn’t make the art come out right?”

“It doesn’t matter, it’s  _ stupid.” _

“I could show you what I remember about art. It isn’t much, mind you, but I remember being decent in school.” Better than a kid ought to be, if you asked his teachers. Warlock gave him a very wary look. “And you could hide your notebooks in my cottage.”

“Don’t care,” Warlock muttered.

“Well, give it some thought, anyway. If it makes a difference, I think your father was unfair to you.” And with absolutely Hellish timing, too.

Only months until Warlock’s eleventh birthday, and he was saying he hated everyone.

Thaddeus Dowling, actual menace to life on Earth.

“I wish he’d drop dead,” Warlock said.

“No. Don’t wish that. Not even on people you hate.” Because of all the children in the universe, Warlock might be able to do it.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Warlock snapped, and ran back to the house.


	23. No Dog, Wrong Boy

Warlock clearly resented having his birthday quietly in Tadfield, rather than somewhere in London with a celebrity entertainer. Crowley said that he thought Warlock’s parents were discontented with Tadfield, too; Harriet had started a row last night about how long it had been since she went to a proper resort.

As usual, Crowley parked the Bentley in the garage of Ezra’s cottage so he didn’t have to tamper with anyone’s mind to explain the car. He stalked into the sitting room. Ezra didn’t think he had seen Crowley that tense since they met.

“One more day.”

“Yes,” Ezra said, “one more day.” The butterflies were doing unpleasant things to his stomach, too, which was probably why he had sorted the contents of his kitchen and alphabetized his books. Now he was dusting. “I suppose at this point, we just hope for the best.”

Crowley sprawled into a chair. “I suppose there’s always plan B.”

Ezra turned around, duster in hand. “There’s a plan B?”

“Nghr. Warlock’s the key to Armageddon, that’s the thing. He starts it. He calls the Horsemen. Take Warlock out of the equation, and it all collapses.”

“How would you take Warlock out of the equation, though?” Unable to sit still, Ezra started dusting the mantelpiece. “Unless him coming into his powers is dependent on being  _ here— _ I suppose we could take him somewhere, kidnap him even—“ Ezra felt a pang of guilt at the suggestion, and reminded himself that even if Warlock didn’t forgive them for making him miss his birthday party, it would be more than worth it. “Wouldn’t you be contract-bound to prevent that, though?”

Crowley shook his head. “The work order expires on Warlock’s birthday. I suppose after that they didn’t think it was needed. The Hound would take care of all the protection he needs, which isn’t much, considering that he can look at someone and make them not have been born.”

“The Hound,” Ezra repeated.

“The Hellhound. They’re sending a Hellhound to him. When he accepts it, when he  _ names _ it, that signifies that he accepts his destiny, and he’ll come into his power, and it’ll all be too late.”

“Why didn’t you mention this before?” Ezra realized he sounded snappish, and made an effort to restrain himself. “We could have spent eleven years telling Warlock not to name strange dogs.”

Crowley was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “Remember how I told you that I sequestered some of the knowledge I got because anything from  _ him _ is malware until proven otherwise? This was part of that lot. I knew it, but I didn’t  _ know _ it. It’s hard to explain.”

Ezra made himself breathe deeply. Which was a mistake, considering the amount of dust he’d been putting into the air setting the cottage to rights. He choked slightly and then recovered. “All right. That makes sense. Not your fault.”

“None of this is bloody well my fault! I didn’t have a choice!”

“I know! I’m not blaming you.” They couldn’t have a fight. They couldn’t  _ afford _ a fight. They didn’t have time. “Actually, this might be good. If we can isolate Warlock from the Hellhound . . .”

“It’ll find him anywhere in the world.”

“Yes, but what happens if we tell him that it’s a danger to him? That he has to deny it, send it away? He’ll probably believe us. He’s seen enough things that are slightly strange, over the years.”

“He might know,” Crowley said. “I don’t know exactly how it works, but at some point he starts getting knowledge from Hell. He might know what the dog means.”

“In that case, we have to continue to hope that we raised him right. That he’ll choose the Earth over Armageddon.”

“That you raised him right,” Crowley corrected. “I was raising him wrong. And—do we really think that Warlock will  _ turn away _ cosmic power? The way he’s been these last few years? He’s unhappy, he’s stifled, he thinks his father doesn’t love him and he may be right, he’s desperate for his friends to accept him as cool enough—“

“You’re terrified that the power will look like a solution to him,” Ezra interpreted, “and he won’t look any further than that.”

“I’m not terrified! I’m—reasonably concerned.”

“Yes. So am I. I think we have to try to trust Warlock. To believe that he’s the boy we’ve both come to care for.”

“I hope you see the problem,” Crowley said, “with telling me to have faith. There’s another solution.”

“Which is?”

“I said it before. Take Warlock out of the equation and it all collapses.”

Ezra thought about it. Then he said, “I would very much like you not to talk in euphemisms right now.”

“I’m saying we could kill him. Tomorrow. After the work order runs out, before the dog appears.”

Ezra dusted a lamp and most of the end table before replying. “No.”

“One life, balanced against the fate of the universe?”

“No. We’ve done this  _ right, _ Crowley, or as right as we could. We have all the work we did with Warlock— _ seven years, _ that’s not a small amount of time for me, even if it’s an eyeblink for you. We can tell him not to name the dog or bad things will happen—we wouldn’t even be lying to him! We’ve done what we can, the  _ right _ way, and if we throw that all away and do the wrong thing now—“

Crowley rose from the chair in the distinctly boneless way he had. “There isn’t any  _ justice, _ Ezra. The universe doesn’t reward you for picking the moral answer.” He stalked around Ezra. “You can’t pretend that everything will work out right just because  _ you _ did the right thing. It doesn’t work like that.”

Ezra put the duster down. “I’m not going to do it.”

“Right. Fine. Should have known, really.”

“Which means that if you want it done, you’re going to have to kill Warlock yourself.”

Crowley froze.

There was a long silence.

“I didn’t think so,” Ezra said quietly. “I know you a little better than that. We’ll tell him about the dog, Crowley. We’ll tell him about the dog, and it will be all right. You’ll see.”

He wished he believed it himself.

§

_ “My _ birthday,” a girl was saying, “had a celebrity magician, and laser tag, and pony rides. It wasn’t just some stupid  _ picnic.” _

Warlock was visibly miserable. Crowley had warned him about the dog, but the way he looked right now, Crowley wondered if he might accept the dog from sheer spite.

Crowley had too much else to concentrate on to worry about Warlock being miserable. He had to conceal himself and Ezra, he had to watch out for the dog—it was very irritating, and potentially dangerous, that his mind insisted on reminding him about Warlock’s misery anyway.

“Anything?” Ezra said quietly, by his side. They were standing in the catering tent. The radio at the back of the tent was playing something that Crowley was too distracted to register, and the sun reflected brilliantly off the tent’s metal poles. It wasn’t an apocalyptic scene.

“Nothing.” Crowley checked his watch.

“And you’re sure you don’t have that ridiculous thing on Beijing time. Or Martian time, for that matter.”

“If you’re jealous, I’ll buy you one of these watches once we save the world.”

Ezra was silent for a moment. “I hadn’t really thought about what we’d do,” he admitted, “if we save the world. Eleven years, that’s—that feels like a lot of my life. And I’ve just been concentrating on this. If I don’t have this to concentrate on—“

“I know what you mean,” Crowley said, and thought of Ligur and Hastur coming for him. If the failure of Armageddon could be traced in any way back to him . . . or, for that matter, if Hell needed a scapegoat . . .

This was probably the end of his time with Ezra, whatever happened. Because he would have to run. And it was entirely unfair to drag Ezra along when Hell was hunting him.

“How long do we have?”

Crowley checked his watch. “Thirty seconds.”

He should kill Warlock. He should kill Warlock right now. He should kill Warlock before he had a chance to do the incalculable harm he was capable of. No, Ezra wouldn’t forgive him, but demons didn’t get forgiveness anyway, did they? And Crowley would have to live with the possibility that he had been wrong, that Warlock would stand tall and reject the dog and all it stood for—but Crowley lived with a lot of things.

He should do it.

“Ten seconds.”

He only had ten seconds left to do it.

Crowley poised his fingers to click. He had to do it.

The second hand on his actually very excellent and not at all ridiculous watch hit the twelve, and traveled past it.

Warlock was having an argument with his obnoxious friend Brett. There was no dog.

Crowley waited a whole minute, and there was still no dog.

_“That,”_ the radio said behind Crowley, _“was_ _“Only Human,” by Crowley are you there?”_

Beside Crowley, Ezra stiffened.

“Yeah,” Crowley said, “who is this?”

_ “Dagon, Lord of the Files, Master of Torments.” _

Crowley mouthed,  _ my boss, _ to Ezra. Dagon was the best he could expect. If you were talking to Dagon, you at least knew Hell wasn’t gunning for you  _ yet. _ If it was Hastur, or Ligur, or Satan forbid  _ Beelzebub, _ then you knew you were in the soup. Which wasn’t to say that Dagon was his friend. Quite the opposite. “Yeah, just checking in about the Hellhound . . .”

_ “He was released minutes ago. He should be with you now. Why? Has something gone wrong, Crowley? _

“Wrong?” Crowley improvised frantically. “No, nothing’s wrong, what could be wrong? I can see it now. What a lovely big—helly—Hellhound. Hey, great talking to you.”

The radio switched off behind him as he fled the catering tent, Ezra on his heels.

“No dog,” Ezra said, sounding a lot calmer than Crowley was.

“No dog.”

“Wrong boy,” Ezra said.

“Wrong boy.”


	24. Running Out Of Time

“So, how do we find the real Antichrist?”

Ezra was being deliberate and purposeful to stave off panic. Crowley was prowling around the cottage for the same reason.

“What do we know about him?” Ezra went on.

“His birthday,” Crowley said promptly.

“His birthday, which means we also know his age. We know he has to be—well, has to look—approximately the same ethnicity as Warlock, or else the baby swap wouldn’t have been practical. I suppose the baby swap must have gone wrong somehow.”

“Should’ve stuck around,” Crowley told the mantelpiece.

“At the party?”

“At the baby swap. I should have stayed there, supervised the nuns. I just—I had to get  _ out. _ Couldn’t escape from my own head, so I drove. I must have hit two hundred on the way back to London.”

And after that, Ezra thought, he had stumbled into his apartment, in such a state that he left the door open—Crowley never did that, Crowley never left ways for people to sneak up on him—and gone into his plant room, and that was where Ezra had found him, too distraught to manage human form. In retrospect, it was an amazing feat of self-control for Crowley to hold it together all the way from Tadfield.

“No point in worrying about it now,” Ezra said. “How does one find an Antichrist? Private detective?”

“Private  _ detective? _ You think some human can find—“ Crowley’s thoughts caught up with his words, and his voice changed. “Another human, sort of, which they’ve been doing successfully for thousands of years—you may have something.” He pulled out his mobile.

Ezra sat quietly through the ensuing conversation. After Crowley hung up, he said, “Who’s Shadwell?”

Crowley appeared to give this question a lot of consideration. “Complete nutter,” he decided finally.

“Ah.” That wasn’t encouraging.

“But he also runs an organization. Falsifies all the names in his reports, probably because they’re a bunch of criminals, and I’m reasonably sure that he’s inflated the organization’s size by thirty percent or so to get me to pay more. The point is, he does have the manpower, and since we know that the Antichrist is either in or is coming to Tadfield, he might be able to find him for us. We can’t count on him, though, we have to do our own—“ He stopped. Moved his head as if he was sensing something. “Can you smell—no, of course you can’t.”

“Smell what?” Ezra asked.

“The bond. The bond between the Antichrist and the Hound, it’s been  _ made.” _ Crowley took a deep breath. “We’re doomed.”

§

Visiting the hospital for records turned out to be an exercise in frustration.

Their first discovery was that the hospital was no longer a hospital. It was, instead, some sort of corporate nonsense with paintball guns and a large herd of irritated employees doing team building, which seemed to involve seeing if they could get each other in a painful place with the paintballs.

Ezra’s second discovery was that Crowley’s demonic-ness was coming out right now, and he really,  _ really _ wanted to cause some mayhem.  _ “What the hell did you do?” _

“They wanted real guns,” Crowley said happily, as automatic weapons fire sounded in the background. “So I gave them what they wanted.”

Ezra took a deep breath. “There are people out there killing each other!”

“Everyone has free will, including the ability to murder. Think of it as a microcosm of the cosmos. Ineffable.” The last word was said with an edge, and Ezra had a tingling of familiarity to go along with it, like a forgotten conversation.

Ezra had come to feel suspicious of those moments. “But they’re dying, Crowley!”

Crowley sighed and relented. “No, they aren’t. No-one’s killing anyone. They’re all having miraculous escapes.” He looked away. “Wouldn’t be any fun otherwise.”

Ezra took several calming breaths. He had come to the uncomfortable conclusion, even back when he thought Crowley was human, that he would love Crowley even if Crowley was a murderer. But he also knew that part of what he had fallen in love with was that Crowley wasn’t cruel, that he went out of his way not to be cruel, that he created an elaborate shadow-play with houseplants to keep everyone else safe from his cruel moments.

Ezra was ashamed of himself for not being completely sure. He should have trusted Crowley not to kill anyone if he didn’t have to. But Crowley’s modus operandi was to give people the rope to hang themselves, and he had been a long time without his plants . . .

“You are so much better than you think you are,” Ezra said.

It wasn’t something he should have said with Crowley so on edge. Crowley spun him, grabbed him, and propelled him back against the wall. “That’s an  _ insult. _ I am not better, I am not good, I am a demon. ‘Good’ is a four-letter word! I will not—mff!”

Crowley made several other noises as Ezra explored his mouth, kissing him desperately. They were out of time, they were out of time, he wanted so much more time—

“Excuse me, gentlemen—“

It was a woman’s voice. Crowley didn’t look at her, or break the kiss, or open his eyes.

“Sorry for interrupting an intimate—I’ll just come back later, shall I?”

Crowley still didn’t open his eyes, but he clicked his fingers and broke away from Ezra with every evidence of reluctance. “We have to ask. We have to . . .”

“Of course.” Ezra adjusted his clothing.

§

After that, talking to the woman was the last thing on Ezra’s mind, but it still had to be done. They found out that she had been a Satanic nun, that she had played a role in the baby swap, and that there were no records of any other patients at the hospital at the time because there were no records. The convent had burned down. The corporate retreat was all new.

“Can you remember anything else about the Antichrist?” Ezra asked the entranced woman desperately. “Anything at all?”

“He had the loveliest little toesie-woesies.”

“Complete waste of time,” Crowley opined, as they made their way out. Ezra gave him a look. “Well. Except for the kissing.”

“Why do you think the convent—Crowley, those are police vans.”

“They won’t notice us. And they won’t be able to make charges stick on the corporate people, either, the guns are all paintball guns again. Come on.”

“Why do you think the convent burned down?” Ezra repeated, following him.

“At a guess, Hastur. To destroy the records. It’s stupid, nobody has a  _ reason _ to go poking about in the records because the Antichrist is normal until it’s too late, but Hastur believes in ‘tying off loose ends.’” Crowley made the phrase scathing. “Also, he likes killing people. I’d be surprised if at least one of the nuns didn’t die in the fire.”

“Where else can we look? What can we do? Your store of prophecies, back in London—“

They got in the Bentley. “Those are Aziraphale’s prophecies,” Crowley corrected. “And I’ve been through them. They don’t even say ‘Tadfield.’ The closest they come is one Armenian prophet, which places Armageddon ‘on the island of Empire, in the place where all is well.’ But that just narrows it down to England.”

Ezra frowned. “Aziraphale was keeping prophecies?”

“Obsessed with ‘em.”

“Why?”

Crowley pulled out onto the main road with his usual disregard for anything in his way, meaning that a Mini ended up in the ditch via demonic miracle. Ezra wasn’t sure he even noticed. “Don’t know. He was just interested, I guess. You’ve always liked puzzles. Let’s just say that the complete collection of Dorothy Sayers and Agatha Christie at your flat wasn’t a surprise. And when you get interested in a topic, you go absolutely all in. Can talk for hours about it. You’ve always been like that.”

“I suppose,” Ezra said, pushing back at the gnawing guilt. Crowley loved him, but Crowley loved him  _ because _ he was, in theory, Aziraphale. What would Crowley think—what would he do—if he realized that Ezra wasn’t the same? At the very least, there would be no more lovely stolen moments backed up against walls.

Not that they had time for any more of that anyway.

“It’s worth a shot, though,” Crowley said. “Getting the prophecies, having you go over them, see what you can find. At least, I don’t have any better ideas.” He turned the car towards London.

“It’s still very odd,” Ezra mused. “Tadfield. Why  _ Tadfield?” _

“Don’t know,” Crowley said, “but Hell is absolutely convinced that this is where it’ll be. Some inside information, maybe. It isn’t healthy to ask too many questions, in Hell.”


	25. The Scream

“I have concluded,” Ezra said the next day, “that most prophets are a little off.” There had been a windstorm earlier, but Ezra had ignored it in favor of the books. He wondered if it was a manifestation of the Apocalypse and whether they could safely ignore the next thing that happened.

Crowley snorted. “More or less what you said to me after you met St. John of Patmos,” he said.

“Aziraphale met him?”

“‘His head and his hairs were white like wool, as white as snow.’ Sound familiar? Only then he seems to have got you confused with Jesus.”

Ezra put his hand self-consciously to his hair. It had always been this color, even when he was a child. His mother had wondered about albinism, but since Ezra didn’t have unusual problems with the sun and was mildly farsighted rather than nearsighted, everyone had dropped the matter eventually.

“You said,” Crowley recalled, “that he was a nice man, but  _ very _ fond of funny mushrooms. You also said that prophecy apparently takes a toll on the human mind, and that the mushrooms were probably a way to compensate.”

Ezra had multiple pages of notes spread across the desk of the cottage’s study, and he felt as if he had been working for days. Crowley had seen to it that his sleep was more restful than usual, as well as shorter, but apparently that couldn’t compensate for the sheer volume of information that he had put into his head. “There’s something I’m missing. Something . . .” His hands quested across the desk. “John of Armenia, here. The same one who put Armageddon on the ‘Isle of Empire.’ Can you do the translation miracle again? It’ll take me too long to wade through the Latin.”

Crowley brushed his fingers over Ezra’s forehead.

“Thank you,” Ezra said, and smiled at him. All this time, and having miracles done for him  _ still _ felt like—well, like a miracle. He bent over the book, adjusting his glasses. “Here. Here it is. And you will find the Foes of Man in the nest of the great Eagle, who has wings like a sword and feet like an ox-cart—“

“Sounds like John of Patmos wasn’t the only John who liked mushrooms,” Crowley said.

“Feet like an ox-cart,” Ezra said, “has got to mean  _ wheels. _ What has wheels and wings like swords?”

Crowley was following along with him now. Ezra could tell by his intent, predatory stillness. “An airplane.”

“Exactly. John of Armenia was, what, fifth century? That’s actually a decent description of an airplane for someone who had no idea what he was looking at. So is there an airstrip around Tadfield?”

“More than that. There’s an American military base,” Crowley said. “That’s why the Dowlings gave birth here. Flew in to the military base, but, oh dear, the baby’s coming early. Birthing hospital just down the road, says our man, run by nuns, lovely people, you’ll be safe as houses with them. And that’s how a string of coincidences led to an important diplomatic family—with a wretched father and a disinterested mother—giving birth exactly where a lot of Satanic nuns could get to them. It had to look natural, you understand? Push too much, and human minds start to push back.”

Same reason why Crowley hadn’t driven the Bentley to the Dowling’s estate while he was working as Nanny Ashtoreth, Ezra thought. Too many people to manipulate, too much opportunity for one of them to pick at a niggling detail.

“So if we go to the military base, we find the Foes of Man. Multiple Foes? Are we sure of the translation on—“

There was a scream.

A howl, really. It went on, and on, sourceless, echoing through the air, shaking the windows. It wasn’t even the volume that made Ezra start up from his chair, though, but the pain in it. A child’s pain, somehow more raw than that of an adult. A child learning that it wasn’t  _ fair, _ that it wasn’t  _ right.  _ A child who had lost something irreplaceable.

The echoes died away. “Where,” Ezra begun unsteadily.

“That way,” Crowley said. “I think. I was—distracted.”

The pain in the voice had got to him too, Ezra interpreted. “It was a child, wasn’t it?”

“It’s got to be connected to Armageddon. Maybe the Antichrist made his first kill. I just—“ Crowley swallowed. “Had a sudden feeling that somehow, it might have been Warlock. Come on.”

§

Ezra followed Crowley. Crowley was following his vague sense of where the scream had come from, and was cutting through people’s gardens to do it. Ezra spotted an elderly man carrying a dachshund making his way towards them with intent, and touched Crowley’s elbow. “Might be a good time to go unnoticed.”

“Young man!”

It was the dachshund man. Ezra turned. He had a vague feeling that he’d met the man before, when summering in Tadfield, and that he hadn’t made a good impression.

“Gentlemen,” the man said, drawing himself up. “I understand that wherever you come from, it may be socially acceptable to tread on other people’s zinnias, but—“

“Sorry, can’t talk, trying to save the world,” Crowley snapped, and tried to dodge around him.

_ “But here in Tadfield,” _ the man persisted, stepping in front of him again, “we have a thing called ‘respect for other people’s property.’ May I suggest—“

He stopped. Crowley’s body rippled all over with black and red scales, and he was  _ stretching upward. _ A snake that could rise up as tall as a man—a snake that could rise up twice as tall, with more fangs than any snake that actually existed and wings unfolding from behind it—

The dachshund struggled free and bolted. The man followed.

Crowley folded himself neatly back into human shape. “Shouldn’t have taken my time with it,” he muttered, and started hurrying through someone else’s garden again.

He did, Ezra noticed ruefully, definitely tread on the person’s zinnias. Ezra went around.

And they were met, the next street over, by a sobbing whirlwind of arms, legs, and longish dark hair. “Warlock,” Ezra said, and then, as the boy tried to dodge around him,  _ “Warlock! _ What’s happening, what’s going on?”

“We thought you were hurt,” Crowley contributed, looking concerned.

Warlock gulped and swiped at his eyes. “Mr. Ezra?”

“Yes, we heard a scream, we wondered where you—oof!” Ezra was being hugged by a hysterical eleven-year-old, which wasn’t a situation he knew how to deal with very well. He ventured a pat on Warlock’s back. “There, there?” He should probably lie to the boy. “It’s going to be all right,” Ezra promised, “just tell us what’s wrong, we’ll take care of it—“

“It’s Adam.”

Beside Ezra, Crowley stiffened. “Warlock,” he said, with exaggerated casualness, “you wouldn’t happen to know when Adam’s birthday is, would you?”

“Same as mine. That’s why none of the Them were at the party.”

_ “Fuck,” _ Crowley said, with feeling.

“But he’s gone all—all  _ wrong. _ He wanted me to rule South America. He wanted to  _ scrape off all the people _ and have me rule South America. And Pepper said he was being awful and he shouldn’t and he should let us go home, and he took away our  _ mouths, _ I had skin growing over my mouth, I felt it, and I couldn’t move and I couldn’t run away and all I could think of was that if I cried too hard I would start sniffling and if I started sniffling I would suffocate because  _ I didn’t have a mouth _ and I couldn’t breathe through it and it was so horrible—it was just so horrible—“ He bunched his fists in Ezra’s shirt and started crying again.

“How did you get away?” Crowley asked softly.

“He let us go.”

“He what?”

“I think he was trying to be nice. He unfroze us, and said he didn’t care where we went, and I just started running. I don’t know what happened to the others. I  _ should _ have stayed, I should have helped Pepper and Brian and Wensley, but I couldn’t, I was just too scared, I was too much of a coward—“ That wrenched an especially deep sob out of Warlock. “I’m a coward. I’m a coward. I should have done something. I should have fought. I’m supposed to be so special, but I  _ couldn’t, _ I couldn’t fight, I couldn’t do it and now awful things are going to happen and—“

“If you had raised a hand to him, you would have died,” Crowley said flatly. “Be glad you didn’t. You did exactly the right thing, Warlock. You looked after yourself. Remember what we say about selfishness?”

“Nothing wrong with a little . . .” Warlock trailed off. “Nanny? Why are you a man?”

Crowley looked caught out. “Er, well . . .”

“He’s a bit of a social chameleon when he wants to be,” Ezra said.

_ “No. _ Not a chameleon. Entirely wrong reptile. Warlock, I want you to do something for me.”

Warlock gulped and nodded.

“I want you to come with us, back to our cottage. Ezra’s cottage, but it’s really both of ours. I want you to stay there. I don’t know if we can keep you safe, but you’ll be safer there than you will be anywhere else.”

Warlock shook his head. “I’ve got to do something.”

“No, you really don’t.”

_ “You _ kept telling me that I’m special. If I’m special, if I’ve got a destiny, then it’s my  _ job, _ I have to—have to do something—I shouldn’t have been so  _ helpless, _ something should have happened, I should have been able to, to break free—“

The problem, Ezra suddenly saw, with having a demon raise a child to think that he was special and a human raise him to think that he had to be  _ good, _ was that he ended up thinking he was Harry Potter. And it probably hadn’t helped that Ezra had read him  _ Harry Potter. _ “No. Warlock, you—we messed up. You don’t have powers. We knew it was someone born on your birthday, and we made a mistake.” If possible, Warlock went paler. “And this is a destiny  _ you don’t want, _ believe me, because what we’re going to have to—please, Warlock. Go home. If there’s still a way to fix this, we’ll fix this.”

Warlock swallowed. “What are you going to do to Adam?”

“I don’t know,” Ezra lied.

“Come on,” Crowley said. “You and I, we need the car to get to the airbase.”

“I’m coming with you,” Warlock said.

“Warlock, please don’t.”

“No,  _ I’m coming with you.” _

§

Getting into the airbase wasn’t difficult. The guard was very upset, but a click of Crowley’s fingers and he was very upset somewhere else. His gun tumbled to the ground without him.

“Where did he go?” Warlock asked from the back seat, sounding small and intimidated.

“I was aiming for America.” Crowley got out of the car, retrieved the gun, and put it in between himself and Ezra as he got back in.

“America is a big place,” Ezra reflected. “I hope he landed someplace residential.” He took a deep breath. “Do you know how to—“

“Never used a modern one. But it should be easy enough. That soldier was ready to shoot us. The gun should be loaded, and cocked, and whatever you need to use it.” He swallowed. “It’s Adam.”

“I know.”

“We watched him make comic books in the cottage with Warlock.”

“I  _ know. _ What sort of choice do we have, Crowley? You heard what Warlock said. About what he did—I see him. Stop here. We don’t want him to notice—”

“They’re still alive,” Warlock interrupted. “All the Them, they’re still alive.”

Ezra got out of the car, not closing the door so as not to attract attention. The Them—minus Warlock—were standing in a row. Across from them— “Who are those?” Warlock asked very quietly.

“Big, nasty, and you don’t want to mess with them. Those are the Horsemen. They—“ Crowley stopped. “What are they doing?”

Ezra took a deep breath and sighted on Adam. He couldn’t do this. He had to do this. Trolley problem. Make sure the fewest number of people died.

He had to do this.

He had no choice.

"No, don't, you can't!" Warlock burst out suddenly. "Look at them!"

Crowley reached out and grabbed Ezra’s arm, pulling the gun sideways. “Don’t. Don’t. I think maybe—look at what they’re doing. What they’re all doing.”

Pepper was struggling with the one in red leather. Kicking her. And then the one in red leather  _ dropped her sword, _ and Pepper had it.

They were close enough to see Pepper say something low and savage, although not what she said. Then she lunged, the lunge that Ezra had shown her. War grabbed at it, stopping it short of her torso. There was a moment of stillness between them, and then War burned.

Ezra pointed the gun at the ground. His hands were shaking. “Is Adam—empowering them?”

“I don’t think it’s just Adam.” Crowley’s voice was just as low. “That sword. I recognize it. That sword belongs to humanity, by right of a gift freely given, and I think that claim trumps War’s claim to it. Things like that  _ matter, _ in magic.”

Brian stabbed the white-haired one, who dissolved like War had.

“They’re getting the bad guys,” Warlock said. “That’s right, isn’t it? That’s what they’re doing? That means Adam . . .”

Ezra put the gun down. “They’re dismantling Armageddon. Am I right?”

Crowley nodded.

“Then you’re right. About stopping me.” He had come close. So very close, to—doing  _ that. _ There was a cold certainty in him: he could have done it. He was capable of that. He could feel the unsteadiness in his hands and the roil in his stomach as he tried not to think about it. “It means Adam is—“

“Still Adam,” Warlock finished.

“Yes. Exactly.”

As they walked up, the second to last Horseman went down beneath the dual assault of Wensley and— “That  _ cannot _ be a Hellhound,” Crowley muttered incredulously. And then, “That’s a Hellhound.”

Adam glanced over at them as they came up, but he was concentrated on his task. “Death. This has to stop.”

“IT HAS STOPPED.” Ezra didn’t think he was hearing the voice. He might have been feeling it. “BUT THEY WILL BE BACK. I AM CREATION’S SHADOW. YOU CANNOT DESTROY ME. THAT WOULD DESTROY THE WORLD.”

“I don’t know,” Adam mused. “We might be able to manage something.”

Death ignored him. “GOOD DAY, GENTLEMEN.”

“Cheek!” Pepper commented indignantly.

She still stepped back, though—they all stepped back—as Death spread his wings. They were huge, and they looked like holes into the universe, but the universe from a very long way away, with glimmers more distant than the stars. Ezra thought of the term  _ fossil light. _

And then Death was gone.

Ezra let out his breath very slowly. Armageddon. Armageddon was done. Armageddon wasn’t going to happen. They had  _ time. _

“Mr. Ezra,” Adam said slowly, “that’s not—you’re not  _ right.” _

“Much better,” Ezra said, turning to him, “now that you did that. I’m glad—with what Warlock said, I was afraid that—“

“No, you’re not  _ right. _ You shouldn’t be like that.”

“What are you talking about?” Ezra said. A cold feeling settled into the pit of his stomach.

“You have to go back.” Adam was staring into him, staring  _ through _ him.  _ “Go back.” _

_ “No, wait! _ I—“

The storm hit before Ezra could get out the rest of what he was going to say.  _ I am not Aziraphale, my love for Crowley is a part of me and I don’t want that part amputated, you can’t make me go back to someone not-me, don’t make me into not-me— _ he couldn’t choke that out. Couldn’t say it. He was collapsing, imploding under the weight of the fear. His identity. His  _ self. _ Dread of dying had nothing on this, dread of Armageddon, even, had nothing on this, the all-consuming  _ fear— _

The fear. Constant, background, almost ignored, but six thousand years of anxiety can accumulate into a scream that ought to sweep away continents. Fear of himself, most of all. Fear that he was  _ wrong. _ The image of his hand, resting inches away from another, and the impulse to reach across and put his hand on Crowley’s, and then the dread that stopped him from doing it, every time—two fears, one external, that they would be discovered, and one internal, that this feeling was a fatal flaw. Ezra understood, suddenly and viscerally, what his life would have felt like if he’d been born in the nineteenth century, as he had when he was Zacharias Failes or Alan Feldman—if he’d never encountered the idea that gayness was something other than a disease. The crushing, grinding endlessness of  _ wrong, wrong, wrong . . . _

It took until the Spanish Inquisition when he named it to himself. When he admitted it. Crowley, so drunk he couldn’t tell up from down, throwing up and filthy and actively trying to drink himself to discorporation because of the  _ things the humans did— _ that, bizarrely enough, was when it became too obvious to ignore. Compassionate. Troublesome, tempting, tricky, never exactly  _ good, _ but compassionate all the same—Aziraphale didn’t  _ care _ that Crowley was a demon. He loved him.

It took a while longer to realize that he didn’t love Crowley  _ despite _ his being a demon. He didn’t love everything but the demon parts, whatever those were. He loved Crowley fully, desperately and absolutely, even the characteristics that he should have hated.

It was a terrifying realization. Both were terrifying realizations. But terror was a steady background hum in Aziraphale’s life. Fear of Heaven, fear of himself.

Aziraphale wasn’t an amputation of Ezra. He was just an enormous, painful past, unrolling endlessly behind him, staggering in its immensity, making it impossible to breathe. Not that he actually needed to breathe, right now, but—habit.

Ezra lay on the tarmac, gasping. “Oh,” he whispered. “It’s  _ me.” _


	26. Unchained

“Oh,” Aziraphale whispered. “It’s  _ me.” _

Crowley didn’t need to be told. He could taste it. For the first time in three and a half centuries, he could taste the brilliance that was Aziraphale. Bright and beautiful.  _ Blindingly _ bright, really, brighter than Aziraphale had seemed since Eden—was that just because the scent was unfamiliar after so long?

He swallowed.

He should have been overjoyed. His best friend, many centuries his only friend, back from the dead.

Except—he had betrayed Aziraphale. Hadn’t he.

Started a relationship with Aziraphale while his memory was gone, while he didn’t know what he was doing. Got  _ physical.  _ Worse, got emotional—loved him, and somehow persuaded Ezra to love him in return. Violating Aziraphale’s will, violating what he knew the angel would want—that was more unforgivable than anything else Crowley had done as a demon. Any moment, Aziraphale would process that, and there would be divine wrath. And Crowley would deserve it.

Aziraphale pushed himself slowly, painfully up off the tarmac. Crowley moved forward to help, and then stopped himself with a small sound. Warlock didn’t hesitate. “Are you all right?” Warlock asked, grabbing onto Aziraphale’s elbow.

“All right. Yes. I think I actually am all right.” Aziraphale turned toward Crowley. “We need to talk,” he added.

He sounded  _ exactly _ the same as Ezra. “No,” Crowley said, “no, I think I’ll—think I’ll be leaving.” Run, run far, as far as Aziraphale would allow. And then maybe crawl into a hole and see how long a demon could sleep when he really put his mind to it. Crowley was fairly confident that he could set a new record.

“No. Not like that.” Aziraphale looked exactly like Ezra, too, face impossibly earnest and open. “It’s not like that. Crowley—“

“What’s going on out here?”

It was a new voice, a woman’s voice. Crowley looked around to see a somewhat gothy woman and a somewhat weedy man walking towards their small group.

“Long story. No time,” Crowley said.

“Try me,” the woman challenged.

“Ah. So,” Aziraphale said. “Three and a half centuries ago, there was a book—perhaps I should start earlier. Since about the year zero, there was an angel who collected prophecies.”

The woman looked taken aback. “Prophecies.”

“Yes. St. John of Patmos, Nostradamus—“

“Agnes Nutter,” the woman cut in.

“Oh, you know of her?”

Wordlessly, the woman held up a book.

“You just stopped them from blowing up the world, didn’t you?” Adam said. “With that.”

“I guess. My boyfriend did the tricky bit.”

“Boyfriend?” the boyfriend echoed faintly.

Pepper muttered something about the patriarchy as Adam said, “Mr. Ezra, this is Anathema. Anathema, this is Mr. Ezra and—I can’t call you Nanny Ashtoreth, can I.”

“Crowley,” Crowley said. He was losing control of the situation. He had never had control of the situation, but he was losing even more control, and that was a problem, because—

Lightning struck the tarmac. Deafening. A new taste joined Aziraphale’s bright, clear taste—no, it was two new tastes, and one of them, Crowley knew. It buzzed like flies.

It wasn’t over. He had been a fool, really, to forget that, even for an instant. “Lord Beelzebub,” Crowley managed. “What an honor.”

Deny  _ everything. _

But the angel who had arrived in the bolt of lightning—the  _ very, very powerful _ angel, Crowley could tell by the blinding quality of the taste—was staring at Aziraphale in what looked disconcertingly like raw terror.

“Oh, hello,” Aziraphale said brightly, and Crowley suddenly wondered if there was a  _ reason _ for raw terror. He had never heard Aziraphale sound like that before. Courteous. Pleasant. Like he could happily disembowel someone, and remain courteous and pleasant throughout, talking about hasn’t the weather been very weather lately and oh, goodness me, that appears to be a spleen. “Gabriel. What a nice surprise.”

“You’re,” the Archangel Gabriel choked. “You’re  _ dead.” _

“Yes,” Aziraphale said pleasantly, “very much so. You murdered me. On the steps of a church, no less. And job very well done, too. High fives all around.” Crowley remembered Warlock teaching Ezra about high fives, with Ezra pretending not to understand until Warlock was giggling helplessly, but somehow the concept of Aziraphale knowing about them didn’t sit well in Crowley’s brain. Aziraphale gave Gabriel the smile Ezra gave customers who wanted to buy Jeffrey Archer books. “I should like my book back, if you would be so kind.”

“You can’t be here, you’re  _ dead!” _

“Completely annihilated,” Aziraphale agreed. “You didn’t leave a scrap.”

“What’s going on?” It was Anathema again, sounding much smaller.

Aziraphale’s smile was full of ice and poison and the rage of someone who had worked customer service. “Well, you see, my dear, in sixteen fifty-six, I managed to obtain the playbook for the Apocalypse.”

_ “The Nice and Accurate Prophecies,” _ Anathema whispered. “They said only one copy was ever sold . . .”

“Quite so. I remember thinking it was a tremendous stroke of luck. I stumbled upon it just before the entire print run was burned, and bought it for five pence off a bored apprentice who would have given it to me for one. I read it, I decoded many parts of the Apocalypse—not all, I was mystified about the ‘iron bird’ parts, which is in retrospect understandable—and then I went to Heaven, to explain to them how they could prevent Armageddon.”

“And they said,” Crowley realized, “‘Have you told anyone else about this,’ and you said, ‘No, I came directly to you . . .’” One of those scenes, like a soldier showing a photo of his girlfriend, that made it inevitable that a character was going to die.

Aziraphale was Ezra enough to catch the movie reference. “In essence, yes. We argued. In the end, I swore that I would go to every angel in Heaven and explain that Gabriel could have stopped the War, and didn’t, and that, I believe, was when Gabriel decided to murder me.” He flicked a smile like a throwing knife at Gabriel. “Imagine my astonishment when I realized that Hell  _ also _ had critical information about the Apocalypse, including its beginnings in Tadfield. I was killed, destroyed utterly, for trying to prevent a war. Heaven and Hell collaborated so that they could stage it correctly. Using  _ my _ book, which I bought with my own five pence, and  _ I will have it back now, please.” _

There was a moment, broken only by Gabriel’s choking noises. And then Gabriel reached behind him, performed a miracle, and produced a pristine green volume.

“Much obliged,” Aziraphale said, sounding for all the world as if he’d finally mastered sarcasm. He flipped through the pages. “Oh, I do hope you didn’t write in it. That would be very unfortunate.”

“If you got rid of him,” Beelzebub said, with the air of someone who had been watching the back and forth and coming to the conclusion that everyone involved was insane, “how is he here?”

“And how did you reverse your  _ demotion?” _ Gabriel managed.

Aziraphale gave them another one of those poisonous smiles. “It’s ineffable, isn’t it?”

“Enough of this.” Beelzebub was tired of dealing with mad people. “There’s a war to start.” Zzzie turned to Adam. “It is your destiny, boy. It is written. Begin it. Destroy the world.”

“Exactly. A few—“ Gabriel shot a hunted look at Aziraphale. “A few—anomalies, a few errors, can’t stand in the way of the greater good.”

“You both want to end the world,” Adam decoded slowly, “to see whose gang is better.”

“Obviously,” Gabriel said. “The entire point of the creation of the Earth—“

“Quite certain of that, are you?” Aziraphale cut in.

“It is the Great Plan!” Beelzebub said impatiently.

“And you’re  _ quite certain _ that’s the same as the Ineffable Plan?”

Gabriel was already too badly rattled to get much more rattled. But Crowley clearly saw the uncertainty cross Beelzebub’s face.

“Oh,” he breathed. “You don’t  _ know.” _

That—that was a game-changer.

Crowley wasn’t even sure what that would  _ mean, _ in terms of what God wanted, or who God was, even. But it made everything different.

Gabriel and Beelzebub focused on him. Crowley did his best not to twitch. Two very powerful beings who now wanted his guts spooled on a torture wheel, that was just peachy. “Seems to me,” he said, holding onto casualness with fingernails and teeth, “there’s a lot of evidence that it  isn’t. Because from where I’m standing, it looks like God  _ personally _ brought Aziraphale back to life to stop the Apocalypse.” If you were going to bluff, go big or go home. “Everyone knows the Great Plan. But the Ineffable Plan is, well, it’s ineffable, isn’t it? By definition, we can’t know it.”

“But,” Beelzebub protested, “it izz written!”

“I don’t actually give a fuck,” Aziraphale said. Crowley gaped at him.

Adam nodded. “It can always be crossed out,” he concurred. Aziraphale and Adam exchanged a respectful glance, and for a moment, Crowley felt that these were two representatives of humanity, despite the fact that neither one exactly was.

Gabriel turned to Beelzebub. Crowley caught the muttered words, “head office,” and “ten million angels” and “stand down.”

Beelzebub’s answer was slightly more audible to Crowley. “No? You ought to try to get ten million demons to put down their weapons and go back to work.”

“Well,” Gabriel said. “At least we know whose fault it is.”

“I wouldn’t pursue that train of thought,” Aziraphale said cheerfully. “If I can come back from the dead, and reverse my own demotion, you should ask yourself what else I can do. Do you really want a chance to find out?”

Gabriel swallowed visibly.

“If nothing else, I would take out a significant portion of whichever side chooses to meddle with me or my husband. You  _ know _ I have the power to do that. I could put either side at a grave disadvantage in a war—so the only way you can come after me is to agree that you’re not going to have one—which means you would lack any reason to come after me. Don’t you love a paradox?”

Crowley couldn’t move. Couldn’t speak.

Gabriel didn’t seem to notice. “Your hus—“

“The Serpent of Eden,” Aziraphale said.

“That’s—that’s  _ disgusting!” _

“For once, agreed.” That was Beelzebub.

“Your opinion has been noted and will be given all due consideration,” Aziraphale said. Somehow, his tone made it entirely clear how much consideration he thought was due.

Gabriel took a deep breath and turned to Adam. “Young man.”

Adam gave him an unimpressed look. “Yes.”

“You were put on Earth to do one thing and one thing only. To  _ end _ it. You are a disobedient brat and I hope someone tells your father.”

“Oh,” Beelzebub promised, “they will. And his father will not be pleazzed.”

And then they were gone.

“So,” Warlock’s voice came timidly, from right behind Adam, “we survived, then?”

“Against all odds,” Aziraphale said, sounding more normal and much less like he was ready to cut someone, “I think we did. Crowley?”

Crowley didn’t move.

“My dear, are you all right?”

“You said,” Crowley started, and then began again. “You called me—“

And then, suddenly, he crashed to his knees. Pulled downward. Smashed towards the center of the Earth, only the tarmac and all its atoms preventing him from vanishing into the ground.

“Crowley!  _ What’s wrong?” _

“They did it,” Crowley gritted. “They told his father.”

The humans seemed to be staggering. Presumably the earth was actually shaking, and it wasn’t just the black hole gravity that was trying to suck Crowley under.

“And his Satanic father is not happy . . .”

Yes, the earth was shaking. Crowley could feel it now. He wondered if it was the entire Earth. He pushed himself to his knees, with extreme effort. “Aziraphale. I’m—I’m sorry that I—“ Did he have to apologize? Aziraphale had said—

“We can’t give up now.”

“This is Satan himself. This isn’t about Armageddon. This is personal.” Aziraphale didn’t look like he understood. “We are  _ fucked!” _ Crowley shouted, sounding desperate even to himself.

“Crowley.” Aziraphale miracled the flaming sword into his hand.

Crowley stared at it, then closed his eyes. Forget the inexplicable talk of husbands, this was the obvious ending. This was how it was always going to be.

Aziraphale shook his shoulder. “I will fight him for you. I will fight him for you, and I will  _ lose, _ do you understand? I can’t do it. Even the way I am now, I can’t do it. You’re the mad improvisor, you’re the one who’s always had a gift for lateral thinking, so unless you want to watch me die  _ again _ by the claws of Satan, I need you to  _ do something!” _

Crowley opened his eyes again. Looked at Aziraphale. Then nodded, shakily, and grabbed time, and  _ pulled. _

§

They were somewhere else.

They were somewhere else, and Aziraphale—Ezra—whoever he was, was enjoying the absurdly wonderful feeling of being  _ uncompressed, _ of not being folded up like origami. He was enjoying it so much that for a moment, he didn’t notice an increasingly panicked human voice saying, “What the fuck? What the  _ fuck? _ What the  _ fuck? What the fuck?” _

“Aziraphale,” Crowley said, and he sounded shaken too.

Aziraphale opened his eyes, realized there were rather a lot of them, and then realized that there were three people staring up at him. Crowley, Adam, and Warlock, who was hanging onto Adam as if he had grabbed him when the earthquakes began. Warlock was the one who had been swearing.

“Oh,” Aziraphale said, realizing. He searched for extra dimensions, found them, and tucked his secondary pair of wings and his other three heads into them, shrinking considerably in the process of returning to mostly human form. “I’m sorry. I—it’s been quite a while—I didn’t mean to frighten you. Are you all right?”

Crowley was the one who answered. “You were a principality,” he said slowly and shakily, as if feeling his way through the sentence, “and now you’re a cherub.”

“Strictly speaking,” Aziraphale said, “I was a cherub, and then I was a principality, and now I’m a cherub again. I was demoted for the whole Eden business.” And please, please, let Crowley assume that he meant giving away the sword, rather than failing to apprehend Crowley himself. He would, Ezra told himself, tell Crowley later. But right now, the demon looked—ragged. Emotionally shredded.

“How do you  _ demote _ a  _ cherub?” _

“I daresay it wouldn’t work,” Aziraphale admitted, “if the cherub tried to fight. I submitted to it willingly.” And he wasn’t going to go into what a gruesome process it had been, either. Losing three of his heads . . .

“So you weren’t bluffing, when you told them you’d take down a good chunk of whichever side came after you.”

“Came after  _ us. _ And no, the bit about terrifying unknown powers was pure bluff. I just thought I might want to back it up with something they know I could potentially do.” After all, Aziraphale might not  _ like _ violence, but he had been chosen above other cherubs to be one of the guardians of Eden. Gabriel remembered. Sandalphon  _ definitely _ remembered coming in second best.

Sandalphon, unless Aziraphale was mistaken, had still been holding a grudge when he helped Gabriel murder Aziraphale.

“I thought cherubs were baby angels,” Adam said.

Behind him, Warlock shook his head. “They’re the rank below seraphim. Um, Archangels with a capital A, seraphim, cherubim, thrones, dominions, virtues, powers, principalities, archangels with a small a, and then your basic angels. Except for capital-A archangels, they divide into three spheres—”

“Doesn’t matter right now,” Crowley said. “Do you understand where we are?”

“I think so?” Adam said. “We’re—somewhere that time isn’t. I can feel it being not here.”

“The Sands of Time,” Crowley confirmed.

“We can’t stay here, though.”

“No. Listen,” Crowley said. “Your father is coming to destroy you. Probably to destroy all of us.

“My dad? He wouldn’t hurt anybody!”

“Not your Earthly father. Satan. Your father who is no longer in Heaven. He’s coming, and he’s angry, and we can’t fight him. Not even Aziraphale can take on something like that.”

“What can I do, then?” Adam demanded. “I’m just a kid.”

“You have a destiny,” Warlock said suddenly.

“No, I don’t!”

“You do. You’re going to be important and special and when you talk, reality sits up and listens. That’s what Nanny was talking about all along.”

“No,” Crowley said, “no, I don’t think that’s right. Reality sitting up and listening, yes, but not the destiny part. You’re a kid. A human child. And that’s not a bad thing to be. I thought you’d be Hell incarnate, but you’re not. You’re human incarnate. And what humans do is, they  _ choose. _ You don’t have a destiny. You have a  _ choice.” _

“Humans defeated the Horsemen,” Ezra—Aziraphale—put in. “Humans shaped the world. I can’t think of anything better to save us.”

“What am I supposed to  _ do, _ though?”

“Find a way to change things,” Warlock said. “Think of what you want. You don’t  _ want _ this—I mean, you don’t want a world where Satan is coming up like a volcano to eat us, so imagine a world where that isn’t happening, and make it—“ He seemed to lose momentum. “Make it happen. I don’t know how to make it happen. But . . .”

“I think I do,” Adam said, and took a deep breath. “All right. I think—I think I know how to do this. Can you—“

“I’m going to restart time,” Crowley said. “You won’t have long to do whatever you’re going to do, so be ready . . .”

§

_ “You’re not my dad!” _

Crowley’s vision was swimming, and he was staying upright mainly through force of will, but he could hear the words hitting home. Finding their roots in reality.

_ “Dads don’t wait until you’re eleven to say hello.” _

It was working.

_ “And then turn up to tell you off. If I’m in trouble with my dad . . .” _

Reality held its breath.

_ “Then it won’t be you. It’s going to be the dad who was there. You’re! Not! My! Dad!” _

Crowley could hear Aziraphale encouraging Adam, and managed to get out, “Say it! Say it again!”

_ “You’re not my Dad. You never were.” _

The world shifted.


	27. The Very First Day of the Rest of Their Lives

Aziraphale didn’t sleep, the night after Armageddon. He fully intended to read for a few minutes and put aside his book, just as he always had, and only realized that wasn’t going to happen when he turned the last page. So then Aziraphale—Ezra—Zacharias— _ someone _ went downstairs.

Aziraphale was dealing with having seven different names, all piling together in his head, and it was driving him a bit mad. He thought he was defaulting to Aziraphale simply because it had been his name the longest. And what did that say about the normal rules for angels, how they couldn’t change their names, only demons changed their names as a sign of their Fallen nature?

Heaven, as Crowley would say, was full of bullshit.

It was a realization Aziraphale had come to while running for his life, in 1656, and hadn’t hurt any less just because he was panicking at the time. If anything, being human had taken the edge off it. Zacharias remembered the cold conclusion that Crowley had edited out of his mind, that Heaven was broken and God either wasn’t entirely omnipotent or wasn’t entirely good. How much of that was unique to Zacharias, and how much was Ezra—no, Aziraphale—oh,  _ blast _ it all, this was confusing.

For lack of anything to do that wouldn’t disturb Crowley or Warlock, Aziraphale got another book.

He only noticed it was morning when Warlock emerged cautiously from the guest room. Being an angel again was doing something to his sense of time—not that Ezra’s sense of time had ever been very good, but he could at least rely on physical pressures and blurred eyes to let him know when he had been reading for too long. And now he couldn’t. He didn’t have those. It wasn’t that he would  _ miss _ them, it was just—disorienting.

Maybe he should get a ridiculous watch like Crowley’s. Although it really didn’t seem his style. He remembered the lovely pocket watch he’d had as Zacharias. Unlikely that he’d be able to locate the same one, but he could find something similar . . .

“Good morning, Warlock,” Alex—Adelard—Aziraphale said.

“Yeah,” Warlock said, looking wary. “Just to be clear, you’re really a giant four-winged thing with four heads and lots of eyes, right?”

“Not when you were growing up,” Aziraphale said. “Then, I was human. Now I’m a cherub again. It’s going to take some getting used to.”

“What happens when the heads disagree? Like, what if the lion head wants to blast someone to smithereens and the human head doesn’t want to? Who wins?”

“I have one  _ mind,” _ Ezra protested. He studied Warlock’s nervous, drawn face. “Are you worried that not all of me likes you?”

“Nanny said that cherubim were all smiting, no mercy,” Warlock said. “God’s hitmen. And—I’m not who you thought I was.”

Aziraphale winced. “A long time ago,” he said, “when I was a principality, I escorted a cherub through a city where we were suffering extreme losses in terms of souls. We encountered a—well, a violent gang, not to put too fine a point on it. Sandalphon—the cherub—didn’t just destroy the gang, he destroyed the  _ city. _ I was barely able to get him to spare the family that sheltered us, and at that, he blasted the wife to salt because I’d told her not to look back, and she did.”

“Lot’s wife,” Warlock interpreted.

“Marah was her name. It always bothered me that the stories didn’t include that. But the point is, Crowley’s views on cherubs are largely based on Sandalphon’s behavior, and others like him. I never told him that I had been a cherub in Eden.”

“Why not?”

Bit of a personal question. “I suppose it was all a bit traumatic for me,” Ezra said. “What do you want for breakfast, dear boy?”

“I can get cereal,” Warlock said, and disappeared into the kitchen.

Aziraphale looked after him for a moment and then went back to his book.

A few moments later, Warlock re-emerged from the kitchen. “So what’s Nanny, then? I mean Crowley. I’ve already figured out that there’s a reason he wears the glasses all the time. And I’m pretty sure she  _ cheated _ that one time when she stole my father’s watch to prove a point. And I figure she’s the reason that one secret service man had a nervous breakdown after he started hitting on women on the staff. And there’s a lot of other stuff.  _ She _ wasn’t a human while she raised me.”

“He’s always been a demon,” Aziraphale told him. “Assigned to educate you in what we thought was your destiny. Which doesn’t mean that he didn’t come to care for you, but he can be—prickly—when people point out that he’s capable of compassion. It may be difficult for him to admit it.”

Warlock slouched into a chair and hunched his shoulders. “Yeah, well. He doesn’t have to. I know I’m The Disappointing One.”

Aziraphale stiffened. “No.”

“Yeah, everyone knows it.”

_ “No. _ You may not be the entity we thought you were, but that has no bearing on the person you are, the person we know, the person who will be a fascinating and deserving young man if you’re given half a chance to be, and I won’t have you denigrating yourself, do you understand, Warlock?  _ I won’t have it.” _

He didn’t realize that he might have put a touch of power into the last sentence, or spoken with multiple voices, until he saw how wide Warlock’s eyes were.

Blast it.

“What do you need, Warlock?” Ezra said gently.

“Nothing. Nothing. I can just—go home. If I had my Switch, I could just stay out of your way, but—“

Aziraphale concentrated and then passed Warlock his little blue-and-red video game contraption. “I don’t need you to stay out of our way. I don’t want you to stay out of our way. Weren’t you doing some sort of art project with this? Tell me about that.”

“It’s lame,” Warlock protested. “I stopped doing that, anyway. It was stupid.”

“Tell me anyway,” Aziraphale said.

§

Crowley woke in the morning to hear voices downstairs. He also woke to the distinct taste-scent of Aziraphale.

That, and the fact that he wasn’t waking up next to a sleep-muddled Ezra, was enough to dispel his brief disorientation and bring the events of yesterday back. He swallowed.

_ We still need to have that talk, _ Aziraphale had said, on the way home.  _ But not right now. You look—strained. I just need you to promise me one thing. _ Crowley was enough of a demon to say  _ what is it _ rather than  _ anything you want in the world, _ and Aziraphale had said,  _ Don’t run. Don’t run away from this. You  _ mustn’t, _ Crowley, do you understand? _

Crowley wasn’t sure he did. Aziraphale had said  _ husband. _ Aziraphale had said he would fight Satan for Crowley's sake. But Aziraphale—

Aziraphale wasn’t the same as Ezra. Was he? Crowley had come to realize, slowly: he had wanted Aziraphale back, but not at the expense of the human who loved him, who he loved desperately with all the strength that he had loved Aziraphale, except that Ezra  _ was, _ in theory, Aziraphale, except that he wasn’t—

It was an impossible tangle. Before, Crowley had labeled it as  _ impossible to solve, don’t think about it. _ But Adam had cut through it for him, and now he didn’t know what to do.

Crowley miracled his clothes on, including the trousers (which always needed a miracle) and his dark glasses, and went downstairs.

“Yes, it does you good to practice styles like that,” Aziraphale was saying to Warlock, bent over a drawing pad with him, “but you also have to learn from the real world. I mean, this—“ He gestured at Warlock’s Switch, which was propped on the coffee table and showing a paused scene from that Cuphead game he liked so much. “It has its visual appeal, but it’s nothing like real life, is it? You look at real life, and you don’t see a single line. The distinction between the edge of your video game system and the things behind it is a boundary of color and tone, not a  _ line. _ So you draw the line when you sketch—“ He demonstrated on the drawing pad. “—to make it easier, but when you start to  _ fill in, _ you make it a matter of boundaries rather than of lines. When you draw, in some ways you have to forget what you’re looking at. Forget the part of your mind that says, ‘Oh, this is a flower,’ or ‘Oh, that’s a tree,’ because your mental shorthand for flower or tree aren’t going to be accurate. You look strictly at the forms, at what appears before your eyes, and you do your best to draw  _ that . . .” _ His pencil raced across the paper.

“How did you learn this stuff, anyway?” Warlock asked.

“He remembers being Adelard,” Crowley said from the door.

“Yes,” Aziraphale said, “I do. I feel I owe you an apology about that, my dear.”

_ “You _ owe  _ me _ an apology about Adelard?” Crowley came forward into the room.

“Sixty-six years of being a priest, because I had some mad notion of bringing a demon to Christ? Yes. I owe you an apology. It seemed to take me a while—as Aziraphale, I did finally figure out that I loved you as you were, but it was a relatively recent realization when I died, and as a human, I seem to have—lost it again? I kept having the impulse to  _ save _ you. Didn’t listen when you told me you didn’t want or need to be saved. It wasn’t until my later lives—the ones that didn’t have as much religion in their childhoods, probably not a coincidence—that I realized that was entirely the wrong attitude to take.”

“I frightened Adelard,” Crowley protested. “Why would he try to help me?”

“I think on some level I always knew you. I was frightened as Adelard, yes, but I also knew you were in terrible pain. I knew I wanted to fix it. To help you. I just had no idea how. I regretted sending you away—as Adelard, I assumed I had  _ banished _ you—for the rest of my days.”

Warlock was looking between them.

“Probably something we can save for another time,” Aziraphale admitted, patting Warlock on the shoulder and looking so much like Ezra that Crowley’s heart trembled. “At some point, we have to let Thaddeus and Harriet know that we have Warlock and that he’s all right.”

“If they noticed I was gone,” Warlock muttered.

“Your parents,” Aziraphale began.

_ “Don’t. _ Don’t lie to me. You spent those years working for them, you know what they’re like.”

“Yes,” Aziraphale agreed reluctantly, “I do.”

“It sucks. I don’t think I remember all of yesterday and I don’t understand exactly what Adam did but I think he got to pick his destiny, because he’s the Chosen One, and I’m  _ not _ the Chosen One and I don’t get to pick and I’m stuck with my dad and it  _ sucks.” _

“Not the Chosen One,” Crowley said. “The Antichrist. Think about what he was chosen  _ for _ before you start wishing to be him.”

“You did help, at Armageddon,” Aziraphale put in. “I’m still not sure how you got pulled into Crowley’s time bubble—I think it was probably because you were hanging onto Adam—but I think all three of us helped steady him so he could do what needed to be done.”

“Yeah, but I was so  _ scared.” _

“Honestly,” Aziraphale said, “so was I. It just took me a bit to notice, because—well, it turns out that I’m used to functioning through rather a bit of fear. I don’t always notice when I’m doing it. Didn’t, until I spent time as a human.”

“And you’re all back, then?” Crowley said, like a human poking at a sore tooth. “Because you’re—“ He wasn’t entirely sure where the sentence was going, so he gestured vaguely.

“We do need to talk,” Aziraphale reflected. “But not right now. There’s Warlock to think about. Dear, I think we really  _ should _ do something about Warlock. His parents are—well, Thaddeus especially—you know how they are. Warlock was telling me, just this morning, that Thaddeus objects to his drawing because he thinks art is ‘for sissies.’ And you know how Warlock loves to draw. Thaddeus is asking Warlock to amputate part of himself to fit some idea that Thaddeus has for him, and I have  _ strong objections _ to self-amputation.”

Crowley thought about it. “Thaddeus wants to go back to America,” he reflected. “Start a political campaign, get in on the ‘elected official’ side of things rather than the ‘appointed official’ one.”

“Yes, well, he’d fit right in with American politicians these days,” Aziraphale said.

“If he was convinced that Warlock should stay in England for some really prestigious academy—he has his obsession with manliness, but he also wants to make sure Warlock goes to Harvard and studies law and goes into politics.”

“I don’t  _ want _ to,” Warlock protested. “I want to draw comic books.”

“The point is,” Crowley said, “it doesn’t actually matter if Warlock really  _ is _ in an academy like that, just whether Thaddeus  _ thinks _ he’s in an academy. Thaddeus would leave Warlock in England with a clean conscience, not that he ever pays attention to his conscience anyhow, and Warlock could live . . .” He trailed off as he realized that he was talking about outright adopting a human child.

Kids were fun. Kids were mad little chaos vectors, and Crowley enjoyed them just for that. But looking after one full-time?

Well, he had done it for the last seven years, hadn’t he? And this wasn’t just any kid. This was  _ Warlock. _

But then there was Aziraphale. And Aziraphale, Crowley knew perfectly well, needed his space, in every incarnation. Crowley wondered if that was part of the reason Ezra had instantly fixed on the idea of being a gardener, rather than something else such as a cook: the idea of working alone with his thoughts. Would adopting Warlock drive Aziraphale away from Crowley? Aziraphale had said  _ husband . . . _

“Here,” Aziraphale finished for him. The look on Warlock’s face was a study in hope. “If he wants to live here. There still is the small matter of—“

Someone knocked at the door.

“I’ll get that,” Crowley said, and moved over to do it. Looked through the peephole in a perfunctory way, saw Pepper and Brian and Wensley, and opened the door. He decided it probably wasn’t the time for threatening to bake them into pies. After yesterday, they  _ might _ realize he wasn’t human. They might believe him. “What do you lot want?”

Pepper gave him a very narrow gaze. “Just checking,” she said, “but you  _ are _ the same person as Nanny Ashtoreth, right?”

“Crowley,” Crowley said. “My name is Crowley. Yes, I’m the same. Why?”

“Why’re you a man now, then? Isn’t that sort of—surrendering to the patriarchy?”

“Satan.” Crowley rubbed his head. “Look, if you want a discussion of what gender means to humans, and why a lot of them have the same one all the time, it's going to take a while, and I can't say I understand _everything_. But I do know that messing about with gender is as contrary to the patriarchy as you can get, because the whole thing relies on rigid, unchanging categories. I’m all for sticking it to the Man, but first you have to identify the Man.”

Pepper mulled over this for a long moment and then nodded, accepting it. “Is Warlock here?”

“Yeah. Come on in.”

The kids trailed in. Warlock put down his pencil, which he had been holding poised over the page rather than drawing, waiting to find out what the Them wanted. “Hi,” he managed finally.

“Hi. There’s a circus setting up over in Norton. Want to grab your bike and come with us?”

Warlock stood up.

“The only thing is,” Pepper went on, “we were going to go over and ask Adam.”

Warlock went still.

“And you were there when he went  _ all wrong, _ but you weren’t there when he came back. So I figure it kind of has to be your choice whether you trust him again.”

“I trusted him to stop the end of the world,” Warlock protested. “I was  _ there. _ I’m not afraid of him. Mostly. I just—it’s going to take me a while to forgive him for being the one who was actually important. I know that sounds awful. But it’s true.“ He looked away. “You’re my best friends. All of you. I mean, I  _ have _ other friends, I have the sort of friends who came to my birthday party, but they’re all—they don’t—if I end up living here, in Tadfield, without celebrity entertainers at my birthday or tickets to Alton Towers or whatever, they won’t be my friends anymore. So I don’t think they count.”

Crowley decided not to mention, for the moment, that he could buy Warlock anything he wanted, and use Thaddeus’s money for it if he was feeling especially vicious towards the man. He remembered Ezra, relieved that Warlock had found normal friends. Ezra had probably been right.

“So, yeah, I’ll go with you and pick up Adam. I’ll—I don’t know. I’ll adjust, I guess. But at some point, I think he  _ ought _ to apologize for the thing with the mouths. It’s only fair.

Pepper nodded in agreement, and the Them piled out the door.


	28. Ineffability

“Well,” Crowley said after a while.

There was a silence. He didn’t seem to know how to continue.

Aziraphale had been mulling over all sorts of things, but he hadn’t ranked them from Most Important to Least Important, or Least Volatile to Most Volatile, and he didn’t know which to begin with. He decided on a relatively safe one. “I wonder,” he said meditatively, “why I actually  _ did _ start collecting prophecies.”

Crowley stiffened. “You don’t remember?”

“I  _ remember, _ but I’m reasonably sure I have a subconscious mind as an angel just as I do as a human. What if, subconsciously, I always had it in my head to try to prevent Armageddon? Even as far back as the year zero?”

Crowley blinked at him for a moment. “But you believed in the Great Plan!”

“I think perhaps I believed in several things at once. I believed in the Great Plan, and I believed that when Heaven won it would all be perfectly lovely, but I also knew that a world with no you and no humans wasn’t one I wanted to live in, so I may have—started taking steps without knowing I was taking steps? I’m not sure. This is all very confusing. I’m still very confused.”

“You’re not the only one,” Crowley muttered. “Are you—I suppose you remember all of it—“ He swallowed. “You remind me so much of Ezra.”

“Because I  _ am,” _ Ezra—Aziraphale—said as gently as he could. “Ezra isn’t a graft, he’s just me, developed in a direction I might not have been going before. It’s all me. You were right about that. Don’t start doubting it now.”

“Ezra wanted things you’d never want.”

“Certain of that, are you? You know how I feel about food. You know how I feel about music, and plays, and all sorts of earthly delights. What makes you think I didn’t want to add sex to my list of things to savor?”

“It’s not just that.” Crowley seemed to be groping for words. “It’s—the emotional side.”

“The love,” Ezra completed softly.

Crowley nodded.

“I think it started in La Mancha.”

“La Mancha? That was where . . .” Crowley trailed off.

“Where you fetched up after two solid weeks of drunkenness, in a ghastly run-down tavern in a poor province. You were filthy. You had thrown up on yourself. You were  _ incredibly _ determined to keep drinking even though you couldn’t reliably get the wine to your mouth, and added splashes of that to the general mess on your clothes. It was all I could do to wrestle you into a room, which, until I convinced them to be elsewhere, had both fleas and bedbugs. It was all a bit disgusting.” Aziraphale took a deep breath. “So I asked you what on Earth made you want to be in such a state.”

“The Spanish Inquisition,” Crowley recalled.

“You went into detail. What they were doing. And then you fell asleep in the middle of a sentence. I looked down at you, and miracled you clean, and thought about how you were compassionate and chaotic at the same time, how those things intertwined, and I suddenly knew that I would do anything to keep you safe and anything short of endangering you to spend time in your company. That I was fond of you, and that it was a fondness that went so far beyond convenient acquaintance that there was no comparison. I had been fond of you for a long time, of course, but that was the first time I used the word ‘love’ in my mind.”

“You didn’t even stay with me in La Mancha! You waited until I woke up, and then you  _ ran!”  _ Crowley shook his head. “You  _ can’t _ have fallen for me in La Mancha. I was—I was—“

“Disgusting,” Aziraphale completed mercilessly. “I think that was part of how I knew. Because I knew that I  _ didn’t mind, _ and that I never would. It was you, so it didn’t matter.” He was quiet for a moment, and then added, “It terrified me.”

“Oh.”

“A defective angel, loving something specifically rather than globally and impartially, and worse, loving a demon. I felt as if everyone could see inside me and see how flawed I am. It’s remarkable how much living in fear of Heaven resembles being fourteen, and in school, and certain that everyone is staring at you. I had a spot of turmoil before I could decide that, in fact, I didn’t care whether I was supposed to love you.” His human experience murmured to him that lack of honesty always came back to bite them. “Well. I say turmoil. ‘Shaking fit’ might be more accurate. At any rate, it’s not quite true to say that I fell for you in La Mancha. La Mancha was where I  _ realized _ that I’d fallen for you long ago, over centuries of time, so slowly that I didn’t notice. And then, just as I did when I was human, I went through all sorts of mad redemption schemes in my head before I recognized that was entirely the wrong way to think of things. I think it was Shakespeare who did it, of all things.”

“Shakespeare?” Crowley echoed. He sounded a bit dazed.

“‘Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds.’ And dozens more. He wrote so much about love, Shakespeare. And while he missed the mark multiple times, watching him struggle for it made my own feelings clearer. You are you, and I love you for you, and I wouldn’t give up the smallest pinfeather. And ‘If this be error and upon me prov’d, I never writ, nor no man ever loved.’”

“You never told me.” Crowley sounded small.

“How? How could I tell you? We both know that a simple ‘thank you’ could have hung in the air long enough to be noticed, and that could have doomed us both. What would a declaration of love do? I had waking nightmares of Hell coming for you. You were always the more reckless one, and I knew that if I told you I loved you, one of two things would happen. The most obvious would be that you would deny me, say I was mad and you had never felt that way towards me, and I felt like that would destroy me. The other possibility was that you would throw all caution to the winds in the name of loving me back, and they would destroy  _ you. _ Of course I kept quiet, Crowley. I only saw bad endings for us. If I didn’t tell you, at least you’d still be  _ there.” _

Crowley was silent. Aziraphale wondered what was going through his head. Betrayal? Resentment? Scorn for Aziraphale’s cowardice?

He looked down at his hands. When had he got the habit of folding them so neatly, not talking with them when he was nervous? He remembered schooling himself painfully to stillness at his—Ezra’s—father’s demands, but he remembered also having the habit as an angel, so which was the reason? “And then I came upon the book. And I had what I thought was a brilliant idea, to stop Armageddon. Not only would it save the world, it would fundamentally alter the relationship between Heaven and Hell, and maybe, eventually, you and I . . . I don’t think I even put a name to it, at that point. I didn’t think the word ‘together.’” He shook his head, and burst out, “I was so  _ timid! _ I’m sorry.”

“Sorry?” Crowley demanded.

Aziraphale winced. “It’s not enough, I know—“

“No! No, it’s not like that—I’m not trying to say—for Satan’s sake, Aziraphale, you  _ tried to stop Armageddon. _ And then, seconds after you got your memory back, you bluffed Gabriel  _ and _ Beelzebub. To keep me safe. So many of the things you did, you did to keep me safe. And I didn’t even know about some of them. I don’t—I can’t—“ He tried to look everywhere but Aziraphale. “I’m not used to that,” he muttered finally.

“Oh, my dear. You’ll have plenty of time to get used to it. If—if you’re all right with it, I mean.”

Crowley looked at him incredulously. “If I’m  _ all right _ with it?”

“You fell in love with me when I didn’t have my memory. And I’m deeply grateful to you, by the way, for not hiding what you were feeling, because I could have drowned myself in doubt, otherwise. But I can’t deny that having my memory back changes things, and you must be very cross with who I used to be, and—“

Crowley lunged across to Ezra’s chair. Braced his arms on the arms of the chair and leaned into Aziraphale’s space. “Stop that.  _ Stop that. _ Do you really think I wouldn’t understand the danger? Understand why you did what you did? I didn’t spend centuries in various states of heartbreak  _ over you _ just for you to say that you’re not  _ good enough.  _ You’re—you are absolutely—you are  _ wonderful, _ Aziraphale, and—“ He stopped, and bent forward, and let his forehead rest against Aziraphale’s. “I love you,” he said shakily. “I love you, and I loved you  _ long _ before La Mancha—not that I want to make this a competition, I don’t, it’s just—argh—I thought my only options were to lose you when you died as a human or lose you when you remembered as an angel, and I—this—I didn’t—“ He ran out of words.

Ezra kissed him.

§

“You terrified Gabriel, you know,” Crowley said that night, lying in bed with Aziraphale. “Popping up after he killed you.”

“The look on his face!” Aziraphale wiggled happily. “He may be the first angel to start believing in ghost stories, and I, for one, couldn’t be happier about it.”

Crowley paused, and then asked the question he had been wondering about since Aziraphale greeted Gabriel. “How  _ did _ you survive?”

Aziraphale’s smile dimmed. “I am,” he admitted, “not entirely certain of that, actually.”

“What?”

“I remember that as I was overwhelmed, I tried to use a miracle to get away. Gabriel and the Archangels closed Heaven to me, but there was still all of Earth. I meant to take the remnants of me off to somewhere, untraceably. I don’t remember it working. I just remember everything going white. I remember knowing, with absolute certainty, that I was dying. Then—there’s a gap.”

“Turning into a  _ human baby _ in Germany is pretty bloody untraceable,” Crowley allowed. “I guess you wouldn’t have had the presence of mind to specify, ‘And make sure I remember who I am,’ or ‘make sure I have access to my powers afterwards.’”

“Quite. So that’s one possibility.” Aziraphale fidgeted with a wrinkle in the duvet.

“I remember wondering,” Crowley said, “if the universe was built so that destroyed angels or demons are recycled into another life. Because—God could have blasted the entire Rebellion out of existence. But She didn’t. She just put us somewhere else.” Which was  _ not _ an adequate description for the Fall, or an adequate description of the pain She had inflicted, but—still. The Fallen weren’t dead. And looking at it objectively, it was a bit of a headache for God’s supposed chosen side that they weren’t dead, wasn’t it? God’s agenda wasn’t what everyone thought. “Between that, and the existence of souls, there’s a pattern of—I don’t know, hoarding? Not taking things back to zero. I know that deducing things about God from the universe is a sucker’s game, you come out thinking that She’s addicted to beetles . . .”

“No, you have a point about all of those things,” Aziraphale said. “Especially the beetles. Well, you can’t blame Her, some of them are  _ lovely, _ aren’t they? If Japanese beetles weren’t such atrocious pests, they’d be celebrated for their colors as much as butterflies. So, yes. That’s possibility two. That I was brought back through natural processes. And very likely reincarnated because I was barred from Heaven, just as you suspected."

“Leaves a lot of unanswered questions,” Crowley said, “but I suppose that’s ineffability for you.”

“Then there’s the third possibility.” Aziraphale wasn’t looking at him. “That you  _ didn’t _ lie to Gabriel.”

“Lie to—you mean—“

“I mean,” Aziraphale said quietly, “that God could have intervened, personally, with direct divine power, to put me in place to help prevent the Apocalypse.”

“Nnrrgh.” Crowley flopped over on his back. “I don’t like that one. I  _ really _ don’t like that one.”

“I know. But it’s possible. It’s also possible that possibility two and possibility three are related. God sees that She wants me somewhere, for whatever reason, and nips back and puts a footnote in the rules, in the Beginning, to ensure that I survive. Wouldn’t put it past her.”

“A lot of things,” Crowley said, “lined up in a very particular way, to make the Apocalypse into the Damp Squib. I asked Pepper, this afternoon, how she defeated War, and she essentially said that she believed in peace very, very hard. That seems a bit unlikely, doesn’t it? And assuming that you  _ can _ defeat the Horsemen just by believing, how likely is it that the Antichrist just happens to have three friends with the right beliefs and the ability to—to—if they weren’t humans, I would say to  _ miracle  _ with them? Given the number of  _ appalling _ families in the world, how likely is it that Adam had a family good enough to make him what he is?”

“I don’t know. I certainly didn’t have very good luck, in my lives. And neither did Warlock. Really we should have kidnapped him long ago.”

Crowley choked slightly and rolled over to face Aziraphale again. “What happened to following the rules?”

“Oh, come now. I gave away the flaming sword that God gave me with Her own hand, lied to Her face about it—“

_ “You what.” _

“Performed multiple temptations and curses on behalf of a demon, entered into a bargain with said demon, made any and every possible excuse to wine and dine across the globe, and told my superior, one of the Archangels of Heaven, that I would personally scupper his war by talking to every angel in existence, having the firm intention of using every trick and temptation I had ever learned from my partner in crime, the Serpent of Eden. I am not a blind rule-follower. I wanted to  _ believe  _ I was a blind rule-follower. There’s a difference.”

“Nnggh,” Crowley said.

“Besides,” Aziraphale said, “while I was human, I decided that the rules,” he affected an accent, badly, “were more in the nature of guidelines.”

Crowley snickered. “You’d make a horrible pirate.”

“I was thinking I would be the bold, stern but fair naval captain who pursues you as you pillage your way across the Caribbean.”

“Right up until I capture you.”

“Naturally. And you’d keep me prisoner in your cabin, carefully hidden away from the dastardly brutes in your crew. Would you tie me up when I try to escape?

“I would absolutely—“ Crowley stopped.

“What is it?”

“Just reflecting on the complete impossibility of me tying up a  _ cherub.” _

“I suppose,” Aziraphale said, “it depends on how nice you are to the cherub. Wine and good food wouldn’t go amiss. I do believe I might like to join you at the Ritz, sometime soon.” He must have caught the look on Crowley’s face, because he abandoned the teasing tone. “As a human, I always knew that all I had to do to escape from your wiles, or your powers, or anything you wanted to do with me, was to say, ‘I’d rather not, dear.’ How much has really changed, now that I can break free a different way?”

“It’s changed,” Crowley said. He wasn’t sure he could define how or what had changed. “It’s all—look, I’m—I’m going to take a walk. Won’t go far. Just to clear my head.”


	29. Of Cherubim

Crowley walked the darkened lane past the Dowlings' summer house and thought about running.

Aziraphale was a cherub.

Cherubim were scary.

Did it follow, therefore, that  _ Aziraphale _ was scary? Crowley wondered if maybe it did. Aziraphale had, after all, not only terrorized an Archangel and a Prince of Hell into leaving them alone, but got his book back in the process. Maybe the question was, did he  _ mind _ that Aziraphale was sometimes scary?

There was, after all, an important difference between Aziraphale being sometimes scary and Crowley having anything to fear.

Crowley had misinterpreted so much. Beginning with assuming that Aziraphale had been killed because of him, rather than an act of gentle, naive heroism of his own—no, that wasn’t the beginning, was it? Beginning with assuming that Aziraphale said what he meant, even when they both had every reason to hide.

_ I think it started in La Mancha. _

How was Crowley supposed to cope with his entire world turned sideways? Warlock wasn’t the Antichrist, the Grand Plan wasn’t the Ineffable Plan, Aziraphale wasn’t a principality—and Aziraphale had loved him for centuries.

Even the good parts left Crowley feeling adrift. Lost.

Part of him wanted to run away, the same way he had thought about doing at the airfield. Run away, find a hole, come out when the world made more sense.

It was mad. He had everything he wanted. He had Aziraphale back. He didn’t just have Aziraphale back, he had Ezra still, when he had thought for the longest time that it was a choice between love and memory, love and immortality. Why did it frighten him so much?

What would Aziraphale do, if he ran away?

The answer, Crowley realized, was that Aziraphale would be heartbroken. He might assume there was something wrong, that Crowley hadn’t left of his own accord. He would probably search for Crowley. But if he actually knew that Crowley was running from him, he would—would quietly turn away, his face devastated, but unwilling to be demonstrative, to rage against fate, just  _ accepting _ it—

The way he always did. The way he had accepted his demotion, maybe? If Crowley ran from Aziraphale, Aziraphale would let him go, and it would shatter his heart.

No.

Definitely not.

So, having established that he wasn’t going to make a midnight dash for Russia, or Peru, or Australia—what was Crowley going to do?

§

“‘M sorry,” Crowley muttered when he returned to the bedroom. He’d had a nice midnight walk. He wasn’t sure he had cleared his head.

“For what?” Aziraphale sounded as if he meant it. “You should take all the time you need. I’ll never be upset at you for it. After all, we  _ have _ time.”

Crowley nodded and slid back into bed. After a moment, he said, “I was Third Sphere, you know.”

“Based on the way that medieval texts confused small-a archangels and capital-A Archangels,” Aziraphale said, “I’ve been convinced for some time that you used to be the former. The whole confusion had a certain—flavor. Intent to prick the egos of the powerful. Pointed prank that echoed down the ages.”

Busted, Crowley thought. Although he would have called it a flavor of  _ fuck you Archangels. _

“Does it matter?” Aziraphale went on. “I won’t hurt you, and you won’t hurt me, so does it matter who would win if we pitted our power against each other? Besides, I’m not entirely certain that I  _ would. _ You have a habit of doing things nobody thought possible because you’ve—I don’t know—absorbed a human quality of imagination. I could overwhelm you in terms of power, but I’m not sure I can stand up to your lateral thinking.”

“Says the angel who spent time as an  _ actual human,” _ Crowley countered. “You can’t tell me you don’t have an imagination. You do  _ art _ for Hell’s sake.”

“I do, now.” Aziraphale looked bemused by the fact. “I haven’t even begun to explore what I have left over from my past lives. I wonder if I can still do conjuring tricks.” He wiggled his fingers.

“That implies that you could do conjuring tricks to begin with,” Crowley retorted automatically. “I don’t think—I don’t think it’s about the power.” Not just about the power.

“Then what?”

“I’m having a hard time seeing how I can be interesting to you,” Crowley admitted. “Having a hard time believing that you would still want me.”

Aziraphale’s face stilled. “That almost sounds like you feel as if you’re beneath me.”

Crowley looked away.

_ “No. _ Crowley—Crowley my love, Crowley the most fascinating person I’ve ever met, Crowley who I could never get bored with in all of eternity—we both know that the angelic ranks have nothing to do with the quality of an angel. Or a demon. I’ve wondered many times why God created ranks in the first place. I don’t suppose it’s likely that I’ll ever get a chance to ask Her any questions, which may be just as well, because I’ve been accumulating a  _ list. _ The point is—the point is, you are not less than me. You are not beneath me. You could never be beneath me.” He paused and added, “Except in a purely literal sense, if you were interested.”

Crowley hadn’t completely got used to innuendo from Ezra, always delivered with a tiny, smug smile, as if he wanted to keep it secret from everyone except Crowley. Having Aziraphale do the same thing—that was disorienting.

Aziraphale let the smile fade into seriousness. “I love you, Crowley. Wholly and completely and for whom you are. Rank, Fallen status, everything. It’s all part of you and I would never trade it.”

Crowley closed his eyes. “You’ve said it. I believe it. I heard you claim me as a husband in front of the rulers of Heaven and Hell. I should be able to  _ keep _ believing it. I just—“

“Oh, my love.” Aziraphale reached out and drew Crowley into his embrace. “I will keep saying it,” he murmured into Crowley’s hair, as Crowley made a broken noise. “I will keep saying it forever. Any time you stop believing it, any time you feel doubt creeping in, just let me know, and I’ll say it again. Any time. Every time. Whenever you need it. Always.”

Crowley made another noise, and was embarrassed to feel scales ripple out from his mark as he considered turning into a snake so that he could cope.

“There’s my beautiful demon,” Aziraphale murmured, and chased the scales with a line of kisses.

§

“Why  _ wouldn’t _ I want to live with you?” Warlock asked Aziraphale, honestly bewildered, when he raised the question.

“I’m not the most exciting person,” Aziraphale reminded him, “and you might not find it the most exciting life. You would go to the local school, in Tadfield. Friends like Brett—“

“Brett’s not my friend.”

“Ah.”

“You guys—“ Warlock seemed to struggle with words. “You were weird. I’m not going to deny that you are both very, very weird. But it always felt like—it always felt like it was okay that I was  _ Warlock. _ And I know that can’t have been easy. I know that I’ve been a pain.”

Ezra thought about it and settled on honesty. “When you’re miserable, you’re something of a trial, yes. I find that many people are. If you want to increase the level of sin in the world, you’d do far better to cause a three hour traffic jam in Central London than you would to tempt one person with their own special vice. Just ask Crowley. He has  _ technique.  _ The point is, I don’t expect you to be anything but a person. That includes being ghastly company some of the time.”

Warlock nodded. “Okay. Yeah, that’s good. Um, my dad and mom—“

“We’ll take care of it,” Aziraphale assured him.

Later, Aziraphale watched Warlock and Adam collaborate, stretched out on the sitting room floor, working on their latest project. “So, the moon strips off its outer carapace and reveals itself to be the Werewolf Empire’s Death Star,” Adam was saying. “Can we do a two page spread on that? With lots of lasers, and fiddly bits, and fighter craft zooming around—I haven’t figured out what to call them yet—“

“Dreadwolfs?” Warlock volunteered, pencil moving. “Lycoraptors? Do you want them to have wolf heads on the front? Because that’s going to take a while.”

“Can we do sort of stylized wolf heads? Like, you know, the Transformers symbol, it doesn’t look so much like an actual  _ face, _ just a blocky sort-of face? But it still looks face-y  _ enough?” _ Adam paused. “Where does ‘lycoraptor’ come from?”

“Lykos is Greek for wolf. Raptor, I think that’s probably Latin, but it means ‘to grab’ and it’s what they call things like eagles and red-tailed kites. So, wolf-hawk. I think. Maybe.”

“Wolf-hawk is good.”

“No dialogue this page?”

“Nah. I want to concentrate on how big the Death Moon is.  _ Next _ page we have the Werewolf Emperor on the bridge of the Death Moon yelling,  _ ‘Subjugate! Subjugate them all!’ _ And then we show the Lunar X-Beams shooting down from the moon and hitting the White House and Downing Street and turning everyone there into werewolves.”

“A distinct improvement,” Crowley put in from his place on the sofa. He had appropriated Warlock’s Switch and was attempting to win the Cuphead game. Aziraphale thought that serpentine reflexes were helping, but he still frowned at it from time to time.

Both boys ignored the editorial commentary. “So right after that,” Adam went on, “we see a ninja. And the ninja is hanging from the ceiling of the Oval Office, and the werewolf president is underneath her—“

“Who is she, though?”

“I’m getting to that. She’s hanging on with those sort of tiger claw things, and she thinks to herself . . .”

§

Aziraphale had made a promise. Aziraphale took promises seriously.

He seemed to be making a point of it. Calling Crowley  _ my love, _ almost at random. When he dropped a kiss on the demon’s head in the morning, when Crowley went to sleep at night, when they were outside in the garden with Warlock and the Them. Warlock rolled his eyes and muttered about  _ mushy stuff _ and  _ get a room, _ which made Aziraphale question him intently to find out if he knew what  _ get a room _ actually  _ meant. _ (He didn’t. Aziraphale thought about it, panicked quite a lot at the thought of trying to educate a child about sex, and babbled to Crowley until Crowley promised to find some useful websites for Warlock instead.)

One day, Crowley emerged from a thirty minute shower to discover that Aziraphale had miracled another door into existence on the upper floor. It was a solution to the problem of the cottage’s size that he hadn’t thought of, and he knocked on it, intrigued.

“Warlock, I’ll be with you shortly, my dear boy, just give me a few more minutes here—“ Aziraphale sounded distracted.

“It’s Crowley,” Crowley said.

“Oh!” There was a sort of swishing noise. “Come on in.”

Crowley came in to discover that Aziraphale had made a very  _ large, _ mostly bare room.

“I thought you were going to carry on until you looked like a lobster,” Aziraphale said.

“What’re you doing?” Aziraphale wouldn’t make a room for no reason, surely.

“It’s nothing important,” Aziraphale said. “I was almost done anyway—actually, no, not really done, but ready to call it a day—“

“You’re acting skittish,” Crowley observed. Had he done something wrong? Was there something  _ else _ wrong? His nerves, never far from paranoia after being trained by Hell, started jangling.

Aziraphale caught the nervousness. “No! No, Crowley, nothing’s wrong. It’s not—I’m not—I was preening, if you must know.”

“Oh.” Crowley hadn’t actually given much thought to when and where Aziraphale preened. He just knew he must  _ do _ it, at least occasionally. “Why hide it?”

Aziraphale fluttered uncomfortably. “Because I had both sets of wings out, and I know—the whole cherub business—“

“It’s all right. It’s all right.” Crowley moved forward and tentatively put his arms around Aziraphale. His instincts were proven right when Aziraphale buried his face in Crowley’s shoulder. “I love you,” Crowley told him. “I love all of you. I don’t love you  _ in spite of _ you being a cherub.” He closed his eyes. “I’ve been dreadful about cherubim, haven’t I,” he said. “And where you could hear me, too. I’m sorry. I didn’t know.”

“When one’s main example is  _ Sandalphon,” _ Aziraphale said, rather muffled.

“And—it’s rude, in Hell, to ask someone’s previous rank, but I think possibly Hastur and Ligur. They’re powerful enough.” Crowley took a deep breath. In Hell, you didn’t admit things like this, but— “I don’t hate cherubim. I was  _ afraid _ of cherubim. I’m not afraid of you. And I would be honored if you would let me preen both sets of your wings.”

After that, they spent a brief time conjuring appropriate furniture. Aziraphale had to lean forward and lounge on something, and strictly human pieces of furniture didn’t often allow for that. It was Aziraphale’s influence that made the resulting chairlike object look faintly Regency, with lion’s paws for feet.

Before long, Crowley was brushing his fingers through the feathers of Aziraphale’s lower wings. Very carefully; they discovered, after Aziraphale flapped in startlement and nearly hit Crowley in the face, that his lowers were as sensitive as—as wings that had never been touched before, Crowley supposed. A part of Aziraphale he had never touched. A part of Aziraphale he hadn’t realized existed. Wing-grooming was meditative, repetitive, a gentle, soothing ritual of seeing to each individual feather, but another part of him was caught up in the wonder of the thing: a new way to touch Aziraphale. Soft, so soft—even the stiff primaries seemed like a gentle texture under his hands.

“What was it like,” he asked, “the first time you touched my wings as a human?”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale sounded almost asleep.

“Never mind.” Aziraphale ought to be able to stay relaxed, as relaxed as he wanted.

“I was awed,” Aziraphale said. “Such beautiful wings, and you let me touch them. I think even back then, I knew it was something special.” He roused slightly. “You have no idea how incredible it was. You, trusting me with your secrets, with your self. Teaching me to touch them correctly, so they wouldn’t be too sensitive. And they felt like, I don’t know, like night clouds. I felt like the luckiest person in the world.” He settled his head on his arms again. “I haven’t altered that assessment.”

“I’m glad,” Crowley said. Aziraphale deserved good things. Aziraphale deserved all the good things. Especially considering that he hadn’t  _ had _ this, during his time as a human—where had the wings gone? Did they exist during that time, furled up somewhere, with Ezra and Zacharias and the rest unaware of why they sometimes felt so  _ cramped? _ Or had they genuinely sprung into being when Adam restored Aziraphale?

And what about this lower set? Aziraphale hadn’t had them—well, on the wall in Eden, he just hadn’t had them  _ out, _ but if Crowley understood it correctly, he  _ actually hadn’t had them _ through most of human history. How did that feel? What did it feel like now that they were back?

“Penny for your thoughts, love,” Aziraphale murmured.

"I didn't always notice the way Heaven was hurting you," Crowley said. "I'm sorry."

Aziraphale's wings tensed and rustled under Crowley’s fingers.  _ "I _ didn't always notice the way Heaven hurt me," he said. "Looking at it in retrospect, with my human memories for comparison, some of the things that seemed normal . . ."

"Don't think about it." Crowley kissed the top of Aziraphale's lower right wing, and felt the angel relax slightly. He would have to pay special attention to those lower wings, Crowley thought. Make it clear that he loved all of Aziraphale. "You deserve so much more, that's all I was trying to say. Comfort. Luxury. Whatever you want, it's yours.”

“You taught me to accept good things, love,” Aziraphale said sleepily. “At least twice over. You did it when you were dating me as Ezra, and you did it long ago. ‘You’ve been doing good all day, you deserve some figs. Try them, they’re lovely.’ Or, ‘If you’re drinking with me, you know that I’m not out performing perfidious deeds, so let’s raise a glass together.’ Tempting me into enjoying myself.”

“I think I fell in love in Rome,” Crowley said. “The first time you turned the tables and tempted me.”


	30. Pimpernel

“Crowley,” Aziraphale said sternly, standing over him.

“Mff.” Crowley was half asleep. He didn’t want to move, and he definitely didn’t want to address whatever was making Aziraphale sound peevish like that.

“Crowley, be reasonable. You can’t sleep in the armchair.”

“Can if I want to.”

There was a pause, and then Aziraphale slid his arms under Crowley, scooped him up, and went toward the stairs.

Crowley found himself waking up quickly. There was something about being carried—or about being carried  _ effortlessly.  _ Aziraphale might as well have been carrying a child, or a cat. “This,” he said thoughtfully, as they started up the stairs, “is something we didn’t have, when you were human.”

“Why? Did you harbor a secret desire to be carried to bed?”

“Not exactly. But there are possibilities. How strong are you?”

Aziraphale was quiet for a moment, entering the bedroom and closing the door behind him with a foot. “I’m not sure. Strong enough to break through the wall of Eden.”

_ “What.” _

“Well, I was told to send them away, as the Angel of the Eastern Gate, and  _ there was no gate. _ It always confused me, that title. I wondered later if it meant that I would  _ make _ the Eastern Gate, with my own hands, in which case, it wasn’t a very good gate; just a hole in the wall, really. Which would also mean that God knew or planned the Apple and the subsequent casting out—but you’ve suspected that for a while, haven’t you?” He deposited Crowley gently on the bed.

“Angel,” Crowley said, “the wall of Eden was supposed to be unbreakable. Actually unbreakable.”

“I think that was just a rumor,” Aziraphale said.

“Puts a new spin on some of the times I rescued you, though. Oh, dear, I’ve been audited for miracles and about to be hanged for being an associate of the wrong king, pity I can’t do anything about the ropes or the locked door, I’m definitely not strong enough to handle both of them without breaking a sweat.” Aziraphale was flushing a little. Crowley pressed the attack. “If you wanted to be tied up, you could have just asked.”

Aziraphale was flushing more than a little. “I  _ did _ get audited for miracles. And besides, it seemed—a bit gauche.”

“Gauche.”

“And I wanted to see you!” Aziraphale went on, a little desperately. “I didn’t reflect on why, not back then, but talking to you would be the highlight of a decade, and—“

“Aziraphale.  _ Angel.” _ Crowley sat up and put his finger on Aziraphale’s lips. “I know. I’m sorry I teased. I’ll rescue you whenever you want. Untying optional.” Aziraphale was very pink now, and Crowley sprawled back on the bed. “And if you want to return the favor—I have to admit, it would be fun to turn it around once in a while.”

“It—it would?”

“Unless you don’t want to.”

“No, that is—I mean—I rather thought—but if you—“ Aziraphale seemed to summon his determination, and lunged forward.

Put his hands on Crowley’s wrists, holding them down.

Crowley pushed against him experimentally.

He wasn’t going anywhere. And Aziraphale wasn’t close to straining. Just casually pinning him to the bed, looking down at him with that open, sincere look that Aziraphale got. “Is this all right?”

“Yeah,” Crowley said. His voice came out a little bit hoarse. “It’s good. It’s—really good.”

“It has recently occurred to me,” Aziraphale said, kissing Crowley gently on the shoulder, “that we should perhaps explore the possibilities inherent in both of us being supernatural. Of me having miracles at my disposal as well.” He let go of Crowley, but Crowley’s wrists were still securely held, miracled tight to the bed with cherub-level strength. “But I want to be gentle. You haven’t had enough gentleness in your existence, and you deserve it.” He smoothed Crowley’s hair out of his eyes. “Will you let me hold you down and be gentle to you?”

“Yes,” Crowley managed. “Oh, yes.”

§

There were adjustments, of course.

Aziraphale sometimes forgot that he didn’t have to do things by hand. It took him until chrysanthemum time to realize that he could just miracle the garden into the condition he wanted.

Crowley sometimes forgot that he didn’t have to miracle things for Aziraphale anymore. Aziraphale didn’t protest too much. The feeling of having someone pamper him, someone indulge him—that still gave him a flutter.

Warlock settled into his new school and started causing trouble. Crowley was pleased, especially with the Stick Bug Incident and the Soaped Floor Race debacle. Aziraphale sighed and went to the parent conferences. The teachers either found him absolutely charming, or found themselves being lectured sternly on the proper way to nurture a creative young mind, and, to their great bemusement, listened to the lecture. “You don’t know any more about nurturing creativity than I do,” Crowley pointed out, after Aziraphale did this to Warlock’s English teacher.

“I did go to university,” Aziraphale said mildly. “And I remember being stifled in school. My time as a human has to help with this.”

Autumn turned into winter. Winters in Tadfield, Aziraphale discovered, were like postcards, cold and crystalline and full of picturesque snow. He struck up a friendship with Anathema Device, the other holder of Agnes Nutter’s prophecies, and Anathema’s boyfriend Newton told Aziraphale that Tadfield invariably had its first snowfall on Christmas Eve. Aziraphale thought about it, and decided that it was the most harmless use of Antichrist powers he could think of.

He moved his store of prophecy to the Tadfield cottage, of course. “Not much use for preventing the end of the world, anymore,” Crowley pointed out.

“Well, yes, but they’re also fascinating in their own right,” Aziraphale said. “It wasn’t  _ all _ about preventing the War. Certainly the misprint Bibles never served any purpose but to, well, to be themselves.” He placed the Nostradamus on the shelf with a certain sense of satisfaction. “There are a lot of books I’ve always wanted to buy, you know. And now I can. I hope you don’t mind driving me to the odd auction or estate sale.”

Crowley gave him an indulgent look.

One day in spring, when Warlock was spending the night at Adam’s, Aziraphale found himself studying the shelf of his old books. “You saved all these for me.”

“What else would I do?” Crowley asked.

“I know. I just—want to thank you.” Aziraphale brushed his hand just a hair’s breadth from the spines. “You know, I was originally going to ask you if you wanted to go to the Ritz. But it’s a long drive to London, and there might be rain later, so I wonder—would you like me to read this to you?” He pulled  _ The Scarlet Pimpernel _ off the shelf and turned around. “I understand you probably have bad memories, after the whole sorry business in the church, but—you also rescued me, in France, and this book somewhat brought us together. So I thought—“

Crowley swallowed. “I’d like that,” he said. “I’d like that a lot.”

Aziraphale smiled at him and sat down on the sofa. Crowley sprawled over him, as serpent-y as one could get while still maintaining human form. Aziraphale miracled his reading glasses to hand, put them on out of habit, and opened the fragile book. “Very well, then. Chapter One. Paris: September 1792 . . .”


End file.
